Regulatory compliance in Ugandan public procurement: A case of Central Government PDEs
Abstract
The study sought to examine the relationship between ethical culture, ethical work climate, whistle blowing, and legitimacy of law enforcement authorities on compliance with the procurement law in PDEs in Uganda. A conceptual model was developed based on Victor and Cullen in the late 1980s to look at ethical orientation in an organization.
A quantitative cross-sectional survey was conducted using a sample of 134 Procurement and Disposal Entities from a population of about 148. Data collection was conducted using self administered questionnaires to get data from respondents. Overall, 194 usable questionnaires were obtained from the field. The unit of analysis was the Procurement and Disposal entities and the corresponding response rate was 76.9 percent. Correlation and regression analyses were used to answer the research questions.
The results of this study indicate that ethical climate, ethical culture, whistle blowing, and legitimacy to law are significant predictors of regulatory compliance. The findings also reveal a positive and significant relationship between ethical culture and ethical climate (r=.22, p≤0.01), ethical culture and legitimacy to law (r=.25, p≤0.01), ethical culture and whistle blowing (r=.30, p≤0.01), ethical climate and legitimacy to law (r=.26, p≤0.01), ethical climate and whistle blowing (r=.29, p≤0.01), legitimacy to law and whistle blowing (r=.34, p≤0.01), ethical culture and regulatory compliance (r=.43, p≤0.01), ethical climate and regulatory compliance (r=.36, p≤0.01), ethical climate and legitimacy to law (r=.26, p≤0.01), and legitimacy to law and regulatory compliance (r=.42,p≤0.01).