A novel framework for sustainable contracting process in organisational public procurement

The procurement system suffered from disintegration and corrupt practices. This study responded to the Government of Iraq (GoI) and other local and international reports concerning the lack of harmonisation and process modernisation. Therefore, the study aimed to integrate contracting activities by introducing a framework for contracting practice and team collaboration. It included mixed methods, and it collected questionnaire surveys of 378 respondents from organisations in the public sector. The authors used a Delphi method and extended the study by interviewing eight experts for the validation process. The findings uncovered the weakness in applying coherent frameworks in the public sector and emphasised the viability of embedding the Integrative Procurement Stage (IPS) in the procurement process. Data analysis revealed that the framework has the potential to improve prevalent issues, such as cost reduction (CR), Ethical Issues (EI), Project Risk (PR), and Team Collaboration (TC). Moreover, experts encouraged restructuring the procurement system and introducing IPS to obtain several advantages, such as procurement transparency and consistency, project integrity and productivity, sharing knowledge, effective contractor participation, combating corruption, and achieving Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).