Influence of Community Pressure on Principals’ Compliance with Procurement Regulations in Public Secondary Schools in Embu County, Kenya

Public procurement has become an issue of public attention and debate, and has been subjected to reforms, restructuring, rules and regulations. Most of developing countries have undertaken strategies to reform their procurement systems. Compliance with public procurement regulations in Kenya continues to be low in public entities despite efforts made by the Public Procurement Oversight Authority (PPOA) to put in place measures to improve compliance. The study sought to analyse the influence of community pressure on Principals’ compliance with procurement regulations in Public Secondary Schools in Embu County. The study employed positivism research paradigm and a cross-sectional descriptive survey research design was adopted. The target population for the study was all the 132 public secondary schools in Embu County consisting of 132 principals, 132 deputy principals, 132 bursars, 1320 suppliers and 660 procurement committee. A sample size of 98 public secondary schools was determined by the Kothari (2013) formula for calculating small sample sizes. A sample of 490 respondents was selected using stratified random sampling by picking 1 principal, 1 deputy principal, 1 bursar, and 1 members of procurement committee and suppliers in each of the 98 secondary schools. Primary data was collected using questionnaires which were pretested for reliability and validity to determine their suitability for use in the study. Quantitative data was analysed using descriptive and inferential statistics and results presented using charts and tables. Inferential statistics, correlation, multiple regression analysis were used establish the nature and magnitude of the relationships between the variables and to test the hypothesized relationships. Out of the 490 questionnaires administered three hundred and ninety five (395) were returned representing 80.6% response rate. The study indicates that majority of the respondents disagreed that community pressure influenced principals’ compliance with procurement regulations in secondary schools with an aggregate mean score of 2.85 and a standard deviation of 1.237. The null hypothesis tested was that there is no significant influence of community pressure on Principals’ compliance with procurement regulations in Public Secondary Schools in Embu County. Inferential statistics showed that the coefficient of determination was significant with a value of 0.339 and p= 0.000. The t-statistic and corresponding p-value were 10.336 and 0.000 respectively. Therefore, at P < 0.005 level of significance the null hypothesis (H0) is rejected and accepts the alternate hypotheses (HA) implying that there is a significant influence of community pressure on Principals’ compliance with procurement regulations in Public Secondary Schools in Embu County. It therefore, means that when the principals are able to manage the pressures exerted by the community then there are higher chances of the principal to be compliant with the procurement regulations. On the basis of these statistics, the study concludes that there is significant positive relationship between management of community pressure and compliance with procurement regulations. The study concluded that the principals do not succumb to the community pressure to bend the procurement regulations in the public secondary schools to favour suppliers rather they adhere to the guidelines. The suppliers to the schools also induce unethical practices like corrupting the school tendering committee members and therefore strong enforcements of laws should be implemented. The study recommends that there should be strict compliance with government regulations on public procurement since this will assist in checking procurement committee performance in public secondary schools. All schools procurement committee members should strictly adhere to procurement ethics to avoid conflict of interest in procurement matters as this can compromise procurement committee performance in public secondary schools