Assessment of road contractors’ eprocurement adoption barriers in Kenya rural roads authority, Kenya

Abstract

The study assessed road contractors’ e-procurement adoption barriers in KeRRA Busia guided by resource based and legitimacy theories on a descriptive design. A sample size of 323 out of 1667 contractors was drawn using Yamane (1967) formula. Stratified random sampling was used to draw respondents from the target population. Primary data was collected using structured questionnaires. A pilot of 33 respondents was studied. Instrument reliability was determined through test retest approach while expert judgment on content was used to determine the instrument validity. Cronbach’s alpha reliability coefficient was α=.830 while content validity index was CVI=0.910. Descriptive statistics like frequencies, means and standard deviations was used to analyze the data. The findings indicate that 79.4% (mean=1.653, SD 0.226) of contractors believe that existing barriers considerably affected adoption of eprocurement. The study concludes that a small portion of contractors have adopted the e-procurement due to many barriers in organizations but with many drivers that can be invoked to raise this low adoption level. The study recommends that workshops be held to expose contractors on the strategic importance of e-procurement in performance of road construction projects. The findings provide practical and useful information for road contractors, Infrastructure Ministry, KeRRA and Government of Kenya for policy formulation, management and regulations.