Selling relationships for a better world : A study showing the importance of relationships and communication in global procurement organizations

Abstract: Problem: Inter Agency Procurement Services Office (IAPSO) is an office within United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) that handles procurement for governments, non-governmental organizations (NGO's), United Nations agencies, international finance institutions etc. Annually all UNDP offices and organizations are measured for performance and customer satisfaction in a quantitative Bureau of Management (BoM) survey. Between 2002 and 2004 IAPSO's ratings dropped from 69% to 54% which had major political implications for the organization. IAPSO has since 2002 utilized a quantitative online survey to measure customer satisfaction; this survey shows a very high satisfaction rating through 2002 to 2004. In order to understand why the two surveys presented different results a third quantitative survey was undertaken. The third survey showed high customer satisfaction but could not explain the low rating in the BoM survey. In both the online survey and the third survey comments provided by the respondents are somewhat contradictive to answers given in bound questions, perhaps indicating that there are issues not captured in the surveys. The different outcomes of the surveys have made staff at IAPSO unsure of how the organization is perceived externally raising more questions than answers and so this thesis aims to understand how IAPSO is perceived externally. Purpose: The purpose of the thesis is to get a holistic view of how IAPSO is perceived externally using grounded theory and symbolic interactionism. Previous quantitative studies fail to give a whole picture of how IAPSO is perceived externally. To achieve the purpose there is a need to understand how IAPSO's stated goals and vision are interpreted, the internal perception and the external perception, and to examine how communication/interaction (or lack thereof) between actors affects the perception. Conclusion: The result show that even though staff members of IAPSO have an accurate picture of how IAPSO is perceived externally and are aware of their customers' needs and problems, IAPSO's vision and stated goals are unclear (both internally and externally) which influence customer experience and affect how and what internal staff communicate to customers, the results show the importance of personal relationships and functional communication. IAPSO do not only provide services, they also sell relationships.