Meaningful involvement of municipal purchasing departments in the procurement of consulting services: Case studies from Ontario, Canada

This paper describes the types of activities that were associated with meaningful involvement of municipal purchasing departments in the procurement of consulting services in Ontario, Canada. Included is a discussion of some of the key contextual factors found to enable meaningful involvement and the type of value that results as it relates to the needs of the client department and the overall goals and objectives of the municipalities as a whole. Ten case studies were conducted that involved in-depth interviews with twenty case study informants including ten purchasing agents, nine client department managers, and a consultant. The findings provide a basis for increasing the involvement of municipal purchasing departments in acquisition processes for these services and address some very important gaps in a particularly arid body of research related to local government purchasing. A number of testable hypotheses and research questions that may enable future researchers to address some of the gaps identified by this work are also presented.