Developing supply chain procurement systems in social housing

This paper reports on a knowledge transfer partnership project (KTP) with a Supply chain organisation and Liverpool John Moores University. An aim of the project is to develop a procurement approach that captures better quality information from supply chain organisations working for registered social housing landlords (RSL). The aims and objectives of the KTP are given along with a suggested methodology to investigate the barriers to information transfer that the new procurement approach must overcome in order to effectively gather rich information. The paper provides a contextual description of social housing and procurement and introduces a theoretical framework that is based upon a literature review in the area of transaction economics. The areas of information uncertainty, opportunism and asset specificity are identified as areas for further investigation through the use of semi structured interviews with supply chain organisations.