New publication about SMEs and government procurement in Canada

Gender-responsive public procurement: strategies to support women-owned enterprises by Barbara Orser, Xiaolu Liao, Allan Riding, Quang Duong and Jerome Catimel

As governments consider new approaches to support small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and women entrepreneurs, a new publication reports on government SME procurement in Canada.?Co-authored by a research team from Telfer School of Management, uOttawa and Public Services and Procurement Canada, to the best of our knowledge this is among the first studies to examine empirically gender of firm ownership and federal SME contracting, while accounting for owner and firm attributes. Sector, firm size and gender influences on SME public procurement are ?examined.

The research establishes benchmarks and a standard of investigation that can be replicated in studies that seek to support gender equality and inclusion in public procurement. The findings also present evidence to suggest that the Government of Canada employ women-focused firm size and sector-specific policies. An extract from the article follows.?

“Gender-responsive public procurement is a mechanism to stimulate women’s entrepreneurial activity (International Trade Centre, 2014; Chin, 2017) and for many economies, a new area of policy development (Harris Rimmer, 2017; Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, 2018a, 2018b). Internationally, reviews of government procurement practices have transitioned from focusing on the challenges of SMEs (Glover, 2008) to understanding the engagement of under-represented groups of SMEs, including women-owned small businesses (Gender Integration Plan, 2013; Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, 2018a, 2018b; Lukiwski, 2018).

To further inform the literature, this study examined two research questions: to what extent are women-owned enterprises under- represented among small- and medium-sized enterprise suppliers; and, do barriers to public procurement – as perceived by small business owners – differ across gender?

The study used a feminist perspective of the RBV and role congruity theory to explain gender and sector influences within government SME procurement. The study also presents evidence to reconcile arguments about SME efficiency (size) versus socially constructed gender influences addressed through social inclusion (gender equality) goals.

Drawing on RBV regarding an association between firm capacity (proxied as firm size), women-owned small businesses have fewer resources with which to exploit PP procurement opportunities. Even after controlling for firm size and other factors, gender differences remained; however, these differences were specific to certain industry sectors. These findings provide evidence to support the recommendation that “solutions to these challenges must be gender-specific [. . .] [s]eemingly gender-neutral rules, policies and programmes can have a disparate impact on women-owned businesses” (International Trade Centre, 2014, p. xv). The findings suggest interventions to stimulate women’s entrepreneurial activity through PP should be sector-targeted and gender-responsive.

This study found that the representation of majority women-owned SME suppliers to government differs significantly across firm size and sector categories, even after accounting for other potential explanatory firm and owner attributes. Majority women- owned SME suppliers were significantly under-represented in those sectors in which women-owned firms are most concentrated: Wholesale and Retail and Other Services. In these sectors, majority women-owned businesses were less than half as likely to be SME suppliers as otherwise counterpart majority men-owned businesses. The likelihood of being a SME supplier did not differ by gender of firm ownership in either the Goods Producing or Professional, Scientific and Technical Services sectors.

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