Service-dominant logic and procurement in Africa: lessons learned from a development agenda in Ghana

A little over a decade now, there have been sweeping procurement reforms in most developing countries. The orchestrators of these reforms - mostly the World Bank and other international financial institutions, have cited financial mismanagement and the lack of transparency in public financial management as reasons for the reforms. In this paper, the authors examine current procurement reforms in Africa from the Ghanaian context and the alignment of these reforms to service-dominant (S-D) logic. S-D logic is seen as a progressive business concept capable of adding value by transforming business practices. Our findings indicate that current procurement reforms in Africa operate under the adversarial approach. Issues of resource integration and networking, collaboration, use of technology in procurement, relationship building and management among actors in business engagements are inimical to current procurement reforms in Ghana. This paper, thus, rekindles the debate on whether management principles in the West can directly be imported and applied in emerging economies.