Why empower your buyer? Antecedents and consequences of buyer authority Free

Government buyers operate in a procurement environment that is unique because it is embedded in a complex political system (Malacina et al., 2022). The scope and scale of government procurement is massive. Government procurement relies more heavily on competition and rigid contracts versus relational exchange, and – due to its accountability to the public – government procurement is laden with greater transparency and fairness (Hawkins et al., 2011). In 2018, the U.S. Department of Defense issued a request for proposals (RFP) to obtain cloud computing services with a single consolidated contract worth $10bn over 10 years (Department of Defense Inspector General, 2020). The magnitude of this “winner-take-all” approach meant that only two companies had the scale and expertise to fulfill the contract: Amazon Web Services and Microsoft (Miller, 2019).

This RFP was for the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI), a stillborn government sourcing attempt that exemplifies the problem of how conflicting political and bureaucratic goals undermine buyer authority. Where a corporate contract award would likely have proceeded with little interference, Oracle and IBM protested the award to Amazon. Congress then sent a letter to the DoD Office of the Inspector General requesting an investigation into the influence of high-ranking DoD officials with connections to Amazon.

At first, buyer authority – the delegated latitude to make decisions [Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR), 2023] – was vindicated by investigations that found the RFP to be fair (GAO, 2018; Department of Defense Inspector General, 2020), and the U.S. Court of Federal Claims dismissed Oracle’s lawsuit while agreeing with a buyer’s determination that conflicts of interest did not exist. Validation from many investigations – all controls internal to the government bureaucracy – did nothing to prevent subversion of buyer authority in the political arena by the media, lobby groups and Congress. Although an Inspector General report (Department of Defense Inspector General, 2020) cleared the buyers of wrongdoing, it cited limited cooperation from the White House that prevented assessment of the allegations of Presidential ethical misconduct. After a former Secretary of Defense alleged that the President told him to “screw Bezos out of that $10bn contract” (Miller, 2019), another Court of Federal Claims’ protest motivated the DoD to seek permission to revise the contract to have the case dismissed before it developed into a lawsuit that Amazon would most likely have won (Freedburg, 2020). JEDI was canceled and the replacement program divided the requirement between four companies: Amazon, Google, Microsoft and Oracle (Serbu, 2021).

JEDI is merely one example of how buyers focus on the symbolic value of following policies, yet the political system in which they are embedded holds them accountable for instrumental value based on user experience both during and after the contract award phase (Kelly, 2007). The message to buyers is that there exists a genuine risk that politics will disempower them, which drives buyers to focus on avoiding being blamed instead of user experience or intentions of policymakers (Pahlka, 2023). A bid protest is a prominent symptom of the erosion of government buyer authority (Hawkins et al., 2023). The effectiveness rate of protests has increased since 2018, with half of protestors receiving some form of relief (GAO, 2022). The cost of avoiding bid protests and maintaining the appearance of fairness is difficult to estimate; past work has found that government sourcing costs comprise 7.7% of the total contract cost, and buyer fear of a protest drives a significant portion of those costs (Hawkins et al., 2016). This represents a significant drain on public resources. Government represents the single largest and unique business customer in the world with more than 60% of the Fortune 1,000 engaging in business-to-government (B2G) exchanges, yet is under-researched (Josephson et al., 2019). Public procurement in countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development comprises an average 12% of gross domestic product [Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), 2017], resulting in substantial economic contribution.

This research explores government buyer’s authority during source selection – how it is established and why it matters. With the rapid adoption of artificial intelligence to automate both the drafting and evaluation of contract tenders, the role of government buyers “will likely become less the ‘checkbox ticker’ and ‘number comparer’ and more the innovation driver and value promoter, fueling procurement as a key strategic function of their organisation”. (Kodym, 2024, p. 468). We define buyer authority as the degree of empowerment, and organizational, policy and leadership support that increases buyer confidence and ability to make decisions. Herein, buyer authority is considered at the level of the individual, not the organization.

According to a survey of 382 procurement executives (Bartolini, 2024), the top challenge (and top strategy) in procurement is internal coordination. Another challenge is process and information technology alignment with suppliers. Thus, both internal and external boundary spanning are challenges. As such, more nuanced study is needed to explore unique contexts (e.g. government procurement), mediators and moderators in boundary spanning.

Recent research has underscored how the power wielded by individual boundary spanners plays a key role in creating (or destroying) value in the context of public procurement (Liljeroos-Cork and Laitinen, 2024). Despite the elevated role of the supply management function, we know very little about the degree of empowerment afforded to a buyer. The decision-making latitude within a sourcing team remains a black box. Yet, critical decisions such as the: type of contract, source selection method and selection criteria can affect sourcing outcomes (Landale et al., 2017), and ambiguity in decision-making authority leads to conflict (Simatupang et al., 2004). Critically, the regulatory and political inhibitions on the authority of government buyers constitute major obstacles to the implementation of high performing contracts (Hawkins et al., 2016; McCue et al., 2015). Anecdotal evidence beyond the JEDI program suggests that the focus on accountability to external stakeholders appears to be increasing the impacts of protests (Hawkins et al., 2022). Therefore, the purpose of this research is to explore the decision-making authority delegated to buyers. The following research questions are addressed:

This research contributes in the following ways. First, we find situational and individual-level factors that increase buyer authority during source selection and one factor that diminishes said authority. Key outcomes of buyer authority show how greater empowerment to the buyer results in improved supplier performance and higher customer satisfaction. These findings contribute to the growing corpus of boundary spanner research (Jorgensen et al., 2023; Liljeroos-Cork and Laitinen, 2024) by unveiling underpinning logic as to why the boundary spanner mechanism yields organizational benefits. A review of boundary-spanner research concluded that boundary spanning is an organizational phenomenon but not a theory due to ambiguous logic and rationale (Tang et al., 2018). Our research offers buyer authority as one logic that explains the boundary spanner mechanism, which should help advance the thinking and predictive power of boundary spanning as it matures toward a recognized theory. Our research also extends boundary spanner logic to benefits reaped by an external organization (i.e. the supplier); to date, research has only investigated the benefits of the boundary spanner’s organization.

The study of boundary spanners began in the 1970s in management literature, and has recently accelerated (Tang et al., 2018). The theory (Huang et al., 2016) holds that particularly – knowledgeable and experienced individuals that effectively connect their organization to external (and internal) organizations – boundary spanners – conduct certain activities to perform certain functions and roles that enable organizational performance. “Boundary spanning is defined as” work to enable exchange between the production and use of knowledge to support evidence-informed decision making in a specific context” (Neal et al., 2022, p. 18). Boundary spanning entails: an activity of collecting information from the environment and transmitting it to the organization (and vice versa), a function of reducing uncertainty and a role of communicating between organizations (Tang et al., 2018).

Boundary spanning has been linked to organizational performance (Marrone, 2010), collaboration (Tang et al., 2018) innovation (Ancona and Caldwell, 1992) and supplier development (Jorgensen et al., 2023). As such, boundary spanning is an important organizational competence (Levina and Vaast, 2005) and a strategic skill (Jordan and Bak, 2016), and boundary spanners are critical to efficiency and effectiveness (Friedman and Podolny, 1992).

The question of the appropriate degree of boundary spanner authority affects both the buyer and the supplier. Trust plays a particularly important role in interorganizational exchange, and the differential impacts of individual vs organizational agency impacts evaluative processes occurring within each organization. Where organizational actorhood predominates over individual boundary spanner authority, evaluators may disregard situation-specific cues and supplant individual trustworthiness with idealized conceptualizations of the organization’s perceived trustworthiness as a collective entity (Schilke and Lumineau, 2023). In such a scenario, despite an individual boundary spanner’s efforts, a positive organizational reputation may lead to a more “rosy” perception and negative organizational reputations may create a persistent competitive disadvantage (Schilke and Lumineau, 2023). Conversely, although greater autonomy granted to an organization’s agents improves interpersonal trust which, in turn, improves negotiation effectiveness, relationship performance and organizational outcomes, excessive boundary spanner autonomy or failure to implement proper oversight can increase the risk of opportunism and corruption (Forkmann et al., 2022). The foregoing underscores the importance of empowering boundary spanners appropriately to achieve organizational goals. Government buying presents an environment where, generally, organizational authority dominates over individual boundary-spanner agency.

Organizational buyers, as key boundary spanners (Aldrich and Herker, 1977), engage in scouting activities (Ancona and Caldwell, 1992) to find sources of supply, market conditions, cost drivers, prices and new technologies. They develop existing suppliers to improve performance and co-develop solutions to meet emergent needs (termed “early supplier involvement”). When not supported sufficiently to achieve organizational goals by both top management and co-workers, boundary spanners (buyers) may reduce their time spent on boundary spanning responsibilities and focus more on processes internal to the organization (Satheesh et al., 2024).

Buyers make myriad decisions related to contract formation such as: procurement goals, quantity of suppliers, contract type, negotiation tactics, source selection method, selection criteria, intellectual property rights, payment terms, local versus global sourcing and socio-economic goals. Two common ways authority can be delegated to a buyer include appointment as the source selection authority (i.e. the decider) and issuing a warrant – the government’s legal express authority stating the types of decisions that can be made, the timeframe and the maximum dollar value of contract actions. Ways in which authority can be withheld from the buyer include appointing a separate source selection decision authority (Fugger et al., 2016) and imposing various reviews and approvals of contract actions throughout the sourcing process.

Research has explicated several ways in which a buyer needs and uses authority to span the boundary to suppliers. Buyers need discretion to reach a compromise with suppliers and with the buyer’s firm whose policies, procedures and interest diverge. Suppliers will trust buyers who empathize with the supplier’s concerns, look out for the supplier’s interests and reach equitable solutions for both parties (Zhang et al., 2011). Perrone et al. (2003) emphasized the importance of role autonomy – freedom to interpret and execute roles – in boundary-spanning in purchasing. They concluded that the degree of role autonomy is determined by: how much other internal functions can influence a boundary spanner’s decisions; the boundary spanner’s experience, competence and power; and the extent to which the organization encourages the pursuit of collective goals and values (i.e. with externals).

Buyers require a plethora of skills as boundary spanners. Boundary spanning skills include: networking, entrepreneurship, innovation, flexibility, lateral thinking, vision, relational and interpersonal, communication, influence, negotiation, mediation, brokering, ability to manage complexity and interdependencies, analytical and strategic thinking (Williams, 2002). These skills are developed over time with accumulated knowledge and experience. The degree of role autonomy delegated to boundary spanners depends, in part, on their level of experience and competence (Perrone et al., 2003). As boundary spanners, buyers are influential in decision-making due to their knowledge, experience and credibility (Spekman, 1979).

Trust and collaboration between buyers and suppliers are important to improve outcomes (Ahimbisibwe et al., 2012; Hsu, 2005). Importantly, boundary spanners cannot rely entirely on individual trust and autonomy to achieve organizational goals; interorganizational trust exists on a continuum of organizational vs individual trust, with contextual conditions determining the degree to which the organization vs the individual within can or should be the focal point of trust (Schilke and Lumineau, 2023). Balancing stakeholders’ needs and trust both intra- and inter-organizationally implies the need to develop complex and socially embedded skills. Research indicates that in the public context, government projects do not assign the most experienced buyers based on type of spend (strategic, bottleneck, etc.) – at least not in the US context (Hawkins et al., 2011). Rather, the government assigns its buyers to the more complex and higher stakes projects based on their past experience at handling difficulty contracting scenarios (Hawkins et al., 2022). The greater the criticality of a government project, the more important the role of social capital to balance the dynamics and contingencies at play when policy needs interact with societal expectations and stakeholder engagement (Bizri et al., 2023). Evidence finds that years of involvement in government processes improves ability to manage the complexities of multiple – often international – stakeholders to achieve effective contracting outcomes in the developed (e.g. The Netherlands: van Meerkerk et al., 2024) and developing-nation context (Bangladesh: Khan, 2013; Nigeria: Essien et al., 2019). Antecedents of collaborative relationships with suppliers in the public-private context have been found to include the ability to manage knowledge acquired within and across current and past projects, with individual buyer experience described as “a necessary condition to induce collaboration and improve operational performance without jeopardizing other broader policy objectives” (Santos and Cabral, 2022, p. 49).

Studies of public procurement suggest that experience matters to developing inter-personal relationships and achieving joint success with suppliers (Roehrich and Lewis, 2014). Experience is also necessary to craft a sourcing strategy that will acquire the needed goods and services but also comply with the many rules and procedures that satisfy other public policy objectives such as fairness and socio-economic support. Regulations constrain buyers’ autonomy to negotiate, take initiative and advocate for the suppliers’ interests (Perrone et al., 2003). Thus, in constrained public procurement, it is even more important that the buying organization figure out ways to empower the buyer to act more autonomously. Allowing buyers to use their knowledge to assess protest risk and create sourcing strategies that mitigate that risk (and build supplier trust) and result in the best value, is critical.

All the preceding lead us to posit that:

Public procurement competence should reduce the gap between skills and the strategies needed to successfully conclude a procurement. The ability to manage the contracting processes to collaborative relationships with suppliers in public procurement has empirical support (Zheng et al., 2008). In the context of public administration, demonstrable expertise also provides an important signal of the perceived legitimacy to act objectively on behalf of others (Williams, 2002), and experience bolsters effectiveness against negative public procurement outcomes (Hawkins et al., 2022). Evidence from boundary-spanner research confirms that job expertise enhances customer firm communication with a supplier firm and thereby influences supplier willingness to invest (Zhang et al., 2011).

Expertise represents a form of cultural capital that bolsters boundary-spanner legitimacy (Kislov et al., 2017). Additionally, professional knowledge ascribes greater professional status and, therefore, expert power to the buyer within its organization (Spekman, 1979). This expert power is then perceived by suppliers as an indication of decision-making autonomy giving them confidence that the buyer will honor commitments (Perrone et al., 2003). Specifically, public procurement certification has been posited to improve public procurement knowledge, skills and competence, which supports public procurement autonomy (Rokkan and Haugland, 2022). Certification likely improves individual career progress (Prier et al., 2010), and job promotion has been found to correlate with higher decision-making authority (Parent-Lamarche and Marchand, 2019). As such, we hypothesize:

Public procurement is held to a high ethical standard; suspected violations of fairness are subject to a bid protest. Bid protests drive up costs due to buyer actions to prevent protests, work required to defend against protests and work related to corrective actions (Arena et al., 2018). Large contracts that are protested can provoke a change to the buyer’s expert conclusions regarding sourcing strategy. For example, the U.S. Air Force considered using a low-bid selection method to choose the supplier for its replacement tankers (Hawkins et al., 2016), though low price was clearly not as important as the risky developmental work needed to convert commercial aircraft. This procurement was plagued by so many mistakes, poor decisions, corruption and bid protests that the Department of Defense withdrew selection authority from the Air Force (Rutherford, 2009). In other cases, an offeror is retained in the competitive range during source selection rather than removed when it clearly has little chance of winning. This is contrary to the buyer’s objective of shorter lead time and efficiency, but the additional rounds of negotiations can reduce an offeror’s perception of unfairness – and, thus, the odds of protesting. The recent trend of increased effectiveness of bid protests increases protest risk overall, and dealing with a company like Amazon that has adopted a policy to aggressively protest government contracts (Axelrod, 2022) clearly poses a threat to buyer authority. In circumstances where the situation undermines or threatens buyer authority, buyers may respond by shifting focus away from managing stakeholders to managing internal organizational communications where they have more influence (Satheesh et al., 2024). In such a situation, the individual buyer willingly cedes to organizational leadership who, in an effort to protect organizational reputation, will reinforce the salience of organizational clout over the agency of individuals internal to the organization (Schilke and Lumineau, 2023). All this suggests the following hypothesis:

Criticality is fundamental to strategic purchasing (Kraljic, 1983). Criticality is an assessment of a procured product or service’s importance to the success of the buying organization (Kraljic, 1983). At low criticality, the outcome of the supplier selected has less impact and the buyer is empowered to handle these low-stakes situations. In accordance with past boundary-spanner research, in a complex purchasing environment, as criticality increases so does complexity, and the government responds by increasing the number of states of system control by adding oversight (Roehrich and Lewis, 2014). In other words, the buyer as the sole pre-award authority is trusted less and more advisors (e.g. peers, legal counsel and contracting committees) are added to the team via reviews. Additionally, the source selection decider is at a higher rank and position meaning that even more staff review the multiple stages of the procurement such as the acquisition strategy, request for proposals, proposal evaluations and contract award.

As criticality increases, it hits a boiling point. Exceptionally large and important programs such as F-35, KC-46, JEDI and the Healthcare.gov insurance exchange would require far more oversight than feasible or practical to control the situation, so the government switches to the other strategy relied upon in complex purchasing environment (Roehrich and Lewis, 2014) – it reduces the number of possible states in the procurement system by the prompt assignment of “superstar” buyers who are empowered to make decisions. This task-force-like approach finds support in the public administration boundary spanner literature where experience and ability to manage interdependencies resulting from years of “on-the-job” inter-organizational experience ensure that the governmental organization achieves its over-arching goals (Williams, 2002). Government buyers mitigate the risk of poor outcomes such as bid protests and opportunism by, for example, selecting and properly managing contract types, especially more complex contracting approaches (Hawkins et al., 2022). The approach of granting special buyer authority to highly important government procurement programs is evidenced by a new Congressionally approved procurement approach in the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health, known as ARPA-H, where the unique stakeholder relationships and highly uncertain nature of research and development requires the authority to use flexible agreements (versus contracts) (Temin, 2023).

In sum, in the hierarchical domain of government buyers, buyer authority will be highest at low criticality and at high criticality where the higher stakes will increase the likelihood of the appointment of an experienced buyer or teams of buyers with greater authority. As such, we hypothesize that:

Suppliers are selected using three methods:

1. invitation for bid (IFB);

2. low-price, technically acceptable (LPTA); or

3. full trade-off (FT).

Using the IFB method, the supplier is selected purely based on the low bid, and negotiations are not allowed. The LPTA method is a form of low bidding but with an ability to first ensure that defined technical, qualification and past performance minimum thresholds have been met before resorting to low price. Alternatively, the FT method allows the buying team to opt to select a supplier with a higher price to secure higher performance or lower risk (i.e. higher than minimum acceptable levels). The FT method is the most complex as buyers must evaluate total cost of ownership (TCO) and validly assess the benefits (i.e. value) of higher performance or lower risk such that the added value attained is worth paying the extra money (Kodym, 2024). The FT method is useful as it has been found to outperform low-price selections (Chen-Ritzo et al., 2005).

The source selection method has been controversial; many firms loathe the LPTA “race to the bottom” (Bunting, 2014). Buyers often opt for the LPTA method to save procurement lead time and to lower the risk of a bid protest. Choosing the most suitable method is the skill of the buyer but can be overridden by higher-level legal and contracts advisors, to the potential detriment of outcomes. Reliance on contractual fairness instead of relational boundary spanning activities partially mediates the relationship on contract performance (van Meerkerk et al., 2024). Research has found that boundary spanning activities matter in both the early stages of collaboration (Roehrich and Lewis, 2014) and during the implementation phase where they positively affect contractual fairness, innovation and performance (van Meerkerk et al., 2024). Selecting an “easier” source selection method therefore may result in sub-optimal outcomes at the implementation stage.

Systemic complexity in a purchasing situation requires matching the complexity of contractual oversight to maintain overall performance outcomes (Roehrich and Lewis, 2014). Evidence suggests that buyers often demur from opting for more complex source selection methods due to fear of increased potential for mistakes in documenting the higher performance and value potential. From a boundary-spanner perspective, buyers seek market intelligence from external organizations to help translate a supplier’s price into the buyer’s value (i.e. TCO) such as decreased costs, time savings and performance improvements (e.g. fewer quality defects). Additionally, a full trade-off source selection method allows for negotiations to consider the supplier’s interests, resolve conflict and reach a compromise – a key boundary spanning activity (Perrone et al., 2003). Based upon this logic, we hypothesize that:

Public procurement performance has been posited to increase in response to competence and autonomy of public procurement actors (Rokkan and Haugland, 2022). Empirical evidence supports this position, with communication by the public buyer improving service quality (Hawkins et al., 2015). The ability to manage the contracting process, to handle stakeholder relationships and to manage acquired knowledge with and across projects bolsters supplier performance while meeting the goals of the buying organizations whose interests the buyer represents (Santos and Cabral, 2022).

More broadly, boundary-spanner research has revealed that individuals having the ability to negotiate, mobilize resources and having the autonomy to act as a “policy entrepreneur” improves successful outcomes (Williams, 2002). Buyers are in many ways the focal actors in a contracting situation, and focal actors with the authority to invoke either their own authority or that of actants (other people, artifacts such as the Federal Acquisition Regulation (Figure 1), and abstract entities such as auditing agencies) have greater ability to shape the situation and orient collective actions to achieve collective goals, meaning greater supplier performance that satisfies the buyer’s customer (Bourgoin et al., 2020). In sum, these insights motivate the following hypothesis:

This research relies on survey data [¹] collected for the purpose of studying bid protests (Calandruccio et al., 2014; Hawkins et al., 2016; Hawkins et al., 2022). However, this study is independent from that research and offers a unique perspective (van Raaij, 2018). The previous research focused on bid protests and examined various factors related to them. This study, conversely, explores the antecedents and a consequence of buyer authority.

The scales measuring latent constructs used a Likert-type scale ( Appendix). Existing scales were used to measure customer satisfaction and supplier performance. Scales for new constructs (criticality, protest risk, and buyer authority) were developed from 18 qualitative interviews explained in Calandruccio et al. (2014). Criticality was measured on a three-item scale. Protest risk was calculated as the average of the sum of the products of magnitude of the consequences and probability of occurrence, which were assessed using five negative consequences of bid protests per the interviews. For each of the five items, respondents indicated the magnitude of the consequences on a scale of −5–5 (converted to 1–11) and the probability of occurrence on a scale of 0%–100%. Buyer authority was measured using five items. Customer satisfaction was measured using a scale adapted from Cannon and Perreault (1999). Internal customers use a common system to report supplier performance, including a customer satisfaction rating [Navy Seal Logistics Center Portsmouth (NSLC PTSMH), 2012]. Thus, buyers can validly use this collected data to report the customer’s level of satisfaction.

The following variables were categorical: source selection experience (greater than 10 source selections coded as 1), DOD’s acquisition professional development program (APDP) certification level (three levels, with level three coded as 1) and source selection method (full trade-off coded as 1). The IFB method was excluded from the research since it does not entail negotiations or trade-offs among price and non-price factors, thus significantly lowering protest risk and reducing award-decision discretion of the buyer (i.e. an aspect buyer authority). Dollar value represented the awarded contract amount.

The initial survey was pretested by six industry practitioners and academicians to ensure face validity and construct validity. The feedback received was used to improve the survey items and reduce the length of the survey.

The population for this study consisted of contracting personnel from one U.S. military department who had executed a formal competitive source selection greater than $150,000. In U.S. Government procurement, contracts less than $150,000 entail a separate set of expedited procedures for selecting suppliers. These procurements are largely delegated to the buyer to make decisions without reviews; thus, we would not expect variation in the amount of decision-making authority delegated to the buyer. The unit of analysis was a source selection.

We used an online survey using Dillman’s (2011) “Tailored Design Method” for internet surveys. To prevent respondent’s selection bias, they were instructed to answer the survey questions based on their most recently completed formal source selection. A survey invitation was sent via email to 3,882 government buyers, and 350 responses were received. Six responses were discarded due to contract values lower than the required $150 K. Thus, there were 344 usable responses yielding a 9% response rate.

The average value of the contracts was $105.7m (std. dev. $563.9m; median: $14.2m; range: $7.9bn). The sample was experienced, an average 13.8 years in organizational buying and 36.9 source selections. Most respondents attained a level 3 certification (280). The respondents were well educated, with 57% holding an advanced academic degree. Most respondents were female (54.7%). The sample was comprised of purchased services more so than construction and products.

As internal reviews (e.g. legal, committee, peer) are determined by the value of the contract, the amount of authority delegated to a buyer could be associated with the value. Therefore, we controlled for the effects of dollar value of the procurement – using a natural log transformation – on buyer authority. Similarly, we controlled for the effect of dollar value on supplier performance and customer satisfaction.

We mitigated non-response using three follow-ups to the initial survey deployment. We assessed non-response bias by comparing responses from early and late respondents (Wagner and Kemmerling, 2010). We examined pairwise comparisons of the means of key constructs (items and summated scales) across the different waves of survey deployment (Wehrle et al., 2022) using the method of extrapolation (Wagner and Kemmerling, 2010), including the five items for buyer authority and the single item for protest risk. Kruskal–Wallis tests (p < 0.05) showed only one difference across waves for one of the five items for buyer authority out of 30 pairwise comparisons. No differences across waves were found for the summated scale of buyer authority. Additionally, no differences were found across waves for protest risk. We then compared a key demographic of the sample to the population of contracting workers in the U.S. federal government showing nearly identical proportions, 54.7% and 55.5% female [Office of Personnel Management (OPM), 2014], respectively. The results suggest that non-response bias did not distort the data.

We used a multifaceted approach to explore whether common method bias was a concern (Conway and Lance, 2010). First, all respondents were assured of confidentiality and anonymity (Chang et al., 2010). Second, we modelled a latent common method factor (Richardson et al., 2009) which showed common method variance to be 18.6%, less than the threshold value of 50%. Thus, the results indicated that common method bias was not problematic.

The contract values reported by nine respondents were obviously invalid (e.g. $40, $250, $1.9, $1), but the responses showed no other evidence of invalidity. Thus, we substituted the mean for these responses. Model results with and without these nine records were the same. We used confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) to assess the measurement properties of the latent constructs. The model-implied covariance matrix differed from the observed covariance matrix in the data (χ²/df = 1.66, p < 0.01). However, the measurement model demonstrated adequate fit to the data per the Comparative Fit Index (CFI) (0.98), Tucker–Lewis Index (TLI) (0.98), RMSEA (0.04) and SRMR (0.03), indicating acceptable fit (Kline, 2010). Table 1 shows the correlations between constructs, item means and standard deviations, as well as scale reliabilities and factor loadings. The composite reliabilities of the scales exceed the 0.70 standard (Nunnally, 1978). The average variance extracted (AVE) for the constructs exceed 0.50 (Fornell and Larcker, 1981) lending evidence of convergent validity. Finally, the AVE for each latent construct was greater than its squared correlation, indicating discriminant validity (Fornell and Larcker, 1981).

The hypothesized model was tested using a covariance-based structural equation modeling (CBSEM). Table 2 shows the structural relationships along with the model fit indices. The chi-squared test is significant (χ²/df = 1.69, p < 0.01); however, the model fit indices (CFI = 0.97, TLI = 0.97, SRMR = 0.06 and RMSEA = 0.045) meet the threshold requirements, indicating good fit (Barrett, 2007).

The model results show that source selection experience is positively related to buyer authority (β = 0.11; p < 0.05), confirming H1. The competence level of the buyer is also impactful since certification level is also positively related to the amount of authority delegated to a buyer (β = 0.13; p < 0.05), supporting H2.

Marginal support was found for the effect of protest risk on buyer authority (β = −0.09; p = 0.09) (H3). This could be due to variance in buyers’ fear of protest (Hawkins et al., 2016); some buyers loathe a protest and will lead their sourcing teams to extraordinary lengths to avoid them, while others accept that protests are simply part of the sourcing process. The criticality of the goods and/or services being purchased is positively and exponentially related to buyer authority (β = 0.22; p < 0.01). When squaring the values for criticality, a positive relationship was found, revealing a U-shaped relationship, confirming H4. However, H5 received no support; the source selection method was not related to buyer authority (β = 0.07; p = 0.25). A possible explanation is that regardless of the complexity of the sourcing decision (i.e. whether by a low-bidder selection or by an estimation and trade-off of value offered), buyers are expected to and empowered to analyze offerors’ proposals using the methods outlined in regulations and policies.

The model results show support for H6; buyer authority is positively related to the internal customer’s satisfaction with the contract outcomes (β = 0.10; p < 0.05). Additionally, we reported the known positive effects of buyer authority on supplier performance and supplier performance on customer satisfaction, not only to emphasize the importance of buyer authority but to demonstrate the robustness of the model. As the effect of buyer authority on customer satisfaction is significant while accounting for the effect of supplier performance (β = 0.67; p < 0.01), we have confidence in the effect and its magnitude.

We further investigated the moderating impact of the buyer’s source selection experience (Table 2). We created two groups – buyers who had experienced less than ten source selections and buyers who experienced ten or more source selections. We then replicated the SEM using multi-group comparison. Less experienced buyers demonstrated no significant relationship between criticality and buyer authority (β = 0.01; p = 0.55), no relationship between buyer authority and customer satisfaction (β = 0.03; p = 0.52), and a marginally significant relationship between buyer authority and supplier performance (β = 0.14; p = 0.07). Conversely, more experienced buyers exhibited a statistically significant, exponential relationship between criticality and buyer authority (β = 0.05; p < 0.01), and also had a statistically significant positive relationship between buyer authority and: supplier performance (β = 0.24; p < 0.001) and customer satisfaction (β = 0.14; p < 0.05). We discovered similar results when examining the change in effects of certification level between the lower-experience group and higher-experience group. The lower-experience group showed no effect of certification on buyer authority (β = 0.24; p = 0.28), while for the higher-experience group, certification level increases buyer authority (β = 0.40; p = 0.07).

Our study addresses a weakness in public procurement research, namely, “that studies on public sector buyers themselves are comparably few” (Flynn and Davis, 2014, p. 168). With the advancement of artificial intelligence and other technologies that will automate many tasks in the contracting process, government buyers seem likely to spend less time on compliance and “checkmark” tasks and more time on defining and driving innovation and value for governments increasingly under cost pressures (Kodym, 2024). The added value from increased supplier performance should result in greater societal impact by obtaining more value for less cost (i.e. less needed taxpayer revenue) and by higher performance that should result in improved service levels to the government’s constituents.

Our study illustrates the importance of theoretically-grounded public procurement research to understand the underlying pre-requisites for high-value public procurement in the era of AI; not only does boundary-spanning theory explain buyer authority, but buyer authority also explains boundary spanning, and, thus, advances it as a legitimate theory, as discussed subsequently.

Whether the boundary spanner phenomenon is a theory has been questioned due to a lack of underlying logic explaining how the roles, functions, and activities lead to performance (Tang et al., 2018). Our research offers buyer authority as one logic that explains boundary spanning, which helps advance the thinking and predictive power of boundary spanning as a theory. Our research also extends boundary spanner logic to benefits reaped by an external organization (i.e. the supplier); to date, research has only investigated the benefits of the boundary spanner’s organization.

We answer a call from boundary-spanner literature for research to understand buyer–supplier relationships (Dekker et al., 2019) by presenting evidence as to how increased buyer authority improves supplier performance and customer satisfaction. Few past studies have distinguished between the individual actor and organizational factors that impact boundary spanning activities (Schilke and Lumineau, 2023); our findings illustrate how key individual factors matter to both the buyer and the supplier context even in the environment of rigid government regulations. The findings indicate that both individual factors – source selection experience and certifications – increase buyer authority. Given the importance of trust and collaboration between buyers and suppliers to improve outcomes (Schilke and Lumineau, 2023; Revilla and Knoppen, 2015), source selection experience represents an important predictor of buyer authority. In the post-bureaucratic era dominated by a shift from reliance on hierarchies to non-hierarchical and inter-organizational collaboration (Williams, 2002), increased buyer authority empowers the shift from authority embedded in formal organizational hierarchies to the “softer” skillsets rooted in deeper professional knowledge and accumulated social influence at the level of individual experience (Schilke and Lumineau, 2023). The more critical the project, the more important the role of buyer experience to effectively managing societal expectations and stakeholder relationships across a variety of international contexts (van Meerkerk et al., 2024; Essien et al., 2019; Khan, 2013). The growth of artificial intelligence improves productivity at the level of individual tasks and decision-making, further arguing for the increasing the authority of buyers.

Experience enables accumulated influence to shape boundary-spanning collaboration (Santos and Cabral, 2022; Perrone et al., 2003) via, for example, more sophisticated selection processes. Expertise, as represented by certifications in our study, complements source selection experience, with expertise augmenting buyer knowledge, boundary-spanner legitimacy (Kislov et al., 2017), public procurement knowledge (Rokkan and Haugland, 2022) and generally improving individual career progress (Prier et al., 2010). Perhaps most importantly, expertise improves communication between the buying and supplying firms (Zhang et al., 2011).

These findings confirm past boundary spanner research highlighting the circumstances under which buyer experience will benefit from delegated authority while also highlighting the limitations of soft versus hard authority. Our research also illuminates how government buyers control the purchasing process under the limitations of public policy while meeting the needs of buying organizations by creating value (Kodym, 2024; Meehan et al., 2017). Increased capabilities of the public buyer can promote cost savings, increase responsiveness, and enhance buyer–supplier coordination (van Meerkerk et al., 2024; Essien et al., 2019; Cabral, 2017; Khan, 2013). It takes experience and understanding of supplier motivations to know when to invoke hard versus soft power to bolster buyer authority effectively while maintaining democratic principles of government, a skillset that includes building alignment and alliances, reading people and situations, interpersonal skills and strategic direction and scanning (Satheesh et al., 2024; Hartley et al., 2015).

Our findings align with past case studies finding that buyers having sufficient autonomy to manage the contracting process and to handle stakeholder relationships bolster supplier performance while meeting the goals of the buying organization (Santos and Cabral, 2022). We expand those findings by highlighting the important impact of buyer authority and by providing a broader empirical sample.

The more critical the procurement, the exponentially more important buyer authority becomes. Buyer authority to meet more frequently and to set appropriate supplier monitoring guidelines becomes more important as criticality increases; buyer authority and astuteness, thereby, provide an invaluable role in setting and managing expectations from the outset in a way that ensures the most effective collaboration between the customer (buying organization) and the supplier (Kodym, 2024; Schilke and Lumineau, 2023; Thomson and Perry, 2006).

Results provided mixed support for the relationship between buyer authority and protest risk. This may result from government regulations that discourage close relationships between buyers and suppliers that undermine buyer authority (Santos and Cabral, 2022). This would result in erosion of social capital that comprises an important component of buyer authority (Bizri et al., 2023). It could also result from the pervasive threat of protests. Some buyers loathe a bid protest while others view a protest as inevitable.

We find a U-shaped relationship between authority for high versus low criticality purchases. This implies that authority may be a phenomenon that is contextual, with highly important purchases motivating the investment of more authority sufficient to the situation The delegation of authority for non-critical purchases is apparent; mistakes are rare and the potential consequences of a mistake in buying them is non-threatening. As criticality increases, the potential consequences of a mistake or misjudgment increase; thus, delegation of authority is withdrawn by the organization opting instead to supplement expertise with oversight and prescribed procedures via regulations. At an extreme level of criticality, however, the organization may not be equipped with the requisite expertise and regulations do not fit the unusual circumstances. Thus, the organization must rely on the buyer who, through extensive relationship-building, research, and unique knowledge, effectively becomes the sole expert who can design a sourcing strategy to overcome the threats. Evidence of this can be seen in the growing use of other transaction authority in the USA (i.e. special customized agreements outside the jurisdiction of acquisition law) for prototyping radical new technologies.

In an environment where procurement professionals increasingly impact both corporate and government reputation, the authority of boundary spanners becomes more important in both the lowest and highest criticalities. Stakeholders evaluate unfairness based on the criteria of whether the person in authority could have acted differently (van Dijke et al., 2010). Greater authority implies that buyers have greater power over decision-making procedures, and our research indicates that stakeholders reward authority with greater performance (suppliers) and satisfaction (customers). Conversely, lower authority equates to less buyer control and therefore poorer outcomes are perceived to be more the result of the poor procedures of the organization or its leaders. Our findings regarding the importance of supporting buyer autonomy and authority seem universal, with parallel empirical findings in European (Satheesh et al., 2024), African (Essien et al., 2019) and Asian contexts (Khan, 2013; Li et al., 2024).

Buyer authority directly affects the customer’s level of satisfaction with the supplier’s performance. Hence, empowered buyers enable a supplier to perform the work such that the buying organization’s objectives are achieved. Thus, purchasing performance hinges on buyer authority – a heretofore unexplored realm of procurement scholarship.

Effectively, this research opens the “black box” of buyer authority by exploring its antecedents. We now know at least some of the key determinants of buyer authority – why authority is delegated, and under what circumstances. For example, we not only know that prior experience in source selection affects the amount of authority delegated to a buyer but also how much experience. Those buyers who have navigated ten or more source selections are entrusted to make decisions throughout the myriad issues, such as deciding how many contracts to award to: prevent supply disruption, maintain competition throughout reordering, and/or to support socio-economic objectives. Another decision entails which type of contract pricing to apply, which effectively allocates the risk of cost overruns among the buyer and supplier. Buyers also develop acquisition strategies that motivate the desired performance; sometimes incentives are used such as additional time on a contract and a financial bonus that buyers must carefully structure. Buyers also decide the source selection method; however, the findings suggest that buyers should not expect to derive any more or less authority solely from the source selection method.

Decision-making authority is also bolstered by attaining a particular formal level of competence. We found that the buyer’s certification level can glean authority. As certification level affects buyer authority, procurement certification programs matter and buying organizations should promote professional certification attainment.

When the buying organization’s need is imperative to mission success, the buyer is more entrusted to make the myriad decisions necessary to select the best supplier(s). This demonstrates the value they add by spanning organizational boundaries. Buyers know how to construct a deal that overcomes organizational boundaries and focuses both organizations on the buyer’s needs. The obvious implication is that organizations should strive to assign their most capable buyers to the most critical requirements.

The post hoc analysis indicates a moderating role of source selection experience. As buyers accumulate source selection experience (at least ten), they accrue increased authority when procuring critical requirements that they use to improve performance outcomes. Therefore, sourcing leaders should endeavor to assign their buyers to at least ten source selections. Additionally, the central theme of the findings is the role of expertise. In the current technologically turbulent environment, budget austerity and focus on efficiency, organizations may benefit from formally developing super-buyers that develop the unique ability to design and execute sourcing strategies, navigate regulatory constraints and who are adept at managing the risks incumbent in new technologies and other environmental turbulism. Additional regulatory relief could be granted to super-buyers lending increased authority.

This study is not without limitations. First, survey responses are, to some degree, inherently biased by such phenomena as socially-desirable responding and a consistency motif. Additional research is needed to assess the generalizability of our findings since the sample came solely from one military department of the USA. Future research could explore whether the findings generalize to non-military and other nations. Future research could explore the extent to which the findings generalize to sourcing in the for-profit sector, though evidence suggests differences between the public and private sectors are fading (Mamavi et al., 2015). Additionally, while the survey response rate was low, it is consistent with extant trends in business research (Melnyk et al., 2012). The survey was lengthy, and it required the respondent to consult records. Another limitation is that the scope of the research was constrained to a pre-award sourcing process. Future research could explore how buyer authority affects post-award supplier management processes such as managing contract changes, claims and terminations.

Future research could explore the amount of authority delegated to buyers. In government sourcing, the amount of authority is indicated by a warrant that documents the express authority in terms of a dollar amount, types of contract pricing (e.g. firm-fixed price or time and materials), types of procurement instruments (e.g. purchase orders, contracts, grants) and types of decisions (e.g. contract award and termination). Future research could explore varying outcomes based on amounts of delegated authority as well as the extent to which experience with ten source selections could be fast-tracked. For example, can source selection simulations instill the same learning that real source selections can?

1. Buyer authority

   • BA1: I was empowered to make required decisions throughout the source selection.

   • BA2: I was trusted that the decisions I made throughout the source selection would be appropriate.

   • BA3: My management supported me on the decisions I made during the source selection.

   • BA4: If I disagreed with an aspect of a legal opinion/review, I had the latitude to deviate from it.

   • BA5^†: *I had to change documents generated during the source selection to correspond with reviewers.

   • BA6: *I might as well not have a warrant since my decisions were overridden by reviewers.

2. Criticality

   • RC1^†: As a portion of the customer’s total annual spending amount, the dollar value of this requirement was high.

   • RC2: This requirement supported a core competency of our customer’s organization.

   • RC3: Compared to other purchases for this customer, this requirement was important.

   • RC4: *An unsuccessful outcome of the RFP would have had only minor consequences to our customer

   • RC5^†: *An unsuccessful outcome of the RFP would have had only minor consequences to our customer.

3. Supplier performance**

   • SP1: Product/service quality per specifications

   • SP2: Delivery performance per specifications

   • SP3: Product/service consistently meets customer expectations

   • SP4: Responsiveness to requests for changes

   • SP5: Required service and/or technical support

   • SP6: Non-conformance rate

   • SP7: Overall performance

4. Customer satisfaction

   • CS1^†: *Our customer regrets the decision to do business with this contractor

   • CS2: Overall, our customer is very satisfied with this contractor.

   • CS3: Our customer is very pleased with what the contractor does for the customer.

   • CS4: *Our customer is not completely happy with this contractor.

   • CS5^†: If we had to do it all over again, we would still choose to use this contractor.

5. Protest risk

   • PR1: Increased costs to settle a terminated contract(s).

   • PR2: Time delay to the mission.

   • PR3: Embarrassment/shame.

   • PR4: Increase in workload to resolve the protest.

   • PR5: Career repercussions for making a mistake or omission that caused a bid protest.

Note(s): Each risk item asked twice: (1) probability of occurrence on a scale of 0%–100% in increments of 10%, and (2) magnitude of consequences rated on a scale of −5–5, where −5 represents “completely undesirable” and 5 represents “completely desirable” (converted to 0–11):

*Reverse coded; **Scale of 1–7, where 1 represents “needs improvement” and 7 represents “superior performance”; all others rated on scale of 1–7, where 1 represents “strongly disagree” and 7 represents “strongly agree.” †Item trimmed as a result of exploratory factor analysis

Source(s): Created by authors