Are entrepreneurial and market orientations of small and medium-sized enterprises associated with targeting different tiers of public procurement?

Timo Tammi, Helen Reijonen and Jani Saastamoinen

Environment and Planning C, 2017, vol. 35, issue 3, 457-475

Abstract: A general view is that small and medium-sized enterprises are underrepresented in public procurement due to their resource constraints. The recent literature suggests that small and medium-sized enterprises' strategic orientations could also have a role in the underrepresentation. In addition, small and medium-sized enterprises tend to position themselves either towards national or wider level public sector customers or towards sub-national level public sector customers. This paper studies how strategic orientations, namely entrepreneurial orientation and market orientation, affect small and medium-sized enterprises’ targeting of public sector customers, and how this affects their performance. Our findings show that market-oriented small and medium-sized enterprises tend to focus on sub-national level public sector customers, whereas entrepreneurially oriented small and medium-sized enterprises have more often national or wider level public sector customers. It also appears that higher performance is associated with national or wider level rather than sub-national level public sector customers. In consequence, more attention should be paid to the differentiation of public procurement markets in developing and refining policies aimed at increasing small and medium-sized enterprises participation in public procurement and at using public procurement as a means to strengthen small and medium-sized enterprises’ roles in promoting overall economic development.

Keywords: Entrepreneurial orientation; market orientation; public procurement; public sector customers; small and medium-sized enterprises (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:envirc:v:35:y:2017:i:3:p:457-475

DOI: 10.1177/0263774X16666814

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