Abstract:

The European Union (EU) created directives to regulate the moving to full Public e-Procurement (P e-P) for all public purchases by 2016. Despite the undisputable benefits, Member States are lagging behind on the paradigm shift.

P e-P’s scholarly evaluation and the theoretical knowledge behind it are still very limited. This paper makes a contribution to the literature gap related to P e-P’s impacts providing preliminary evidence for its adoption in Portugal. Following a case-based approach involving interviews with professional managers, our study aims at understanding P e-P’s implementation benefits and barriers in SMEs through the analysis of Portuguese context. Results provide relevant information regarding factors affecting Public e-Procurement’s adoption forecasting implications for private firms, platform providers and policy makers in the 2016 full moving to P e-P’s throughout the EU.