Strategic public procurement regulatory compliance model with mediating effect of ethical behavior

The paper proposes and validates the strategic public procurement regulatory compliance model with mediation effect of ethical behavior. It expands the socio-economic theory of regulatory compliance to explore the mediating effect of ethical behavior on the influence of professionalism, familiarity, enforcement, resistance to political pressure and compliance with public procurement regulation. A quantitative research design was deployed using 125 procurement officers as a sample group. The data from the sample was analyzed using Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM). The results validated the hypotheses for the strategic public procurement regulatory compliance model with mediation effect of ethical behavior. The study not only confirmed the earlier findings on the direct effects of professionalism, familiarity, enforcement, resistance to political pressure and ethical behavior on compliance, but also established the mediating effect of ethical behavior on compliance on all the predictors except resistance to political pressure. The study implied that ethical behavior of public procurement officers should be a strategic point of concern by both policymakers and professional bodies. Theoretically, the studyexpands thesocio-economic theory of regulatory compliance within the context of procurement literature through mediation effects of ethical behavior via structural analysis.