The decision-making behaviour of public procurement officers: An interplay between procedural rationality and groupthink bias

Malaysian public procurement has always been regulated by comprehensive procedures to enhance rationality in decision-making. Nevertheless, the public procurement is still plagued with recurring irregularities. This research investigates the opposing factors at play in between the individual decision-making process and the group decision-making environment. A research model was built on the notions of procedural rationality and groupthink to examine the outcome of individual procedural rationality under the influence of groupthink behaviour. The Partial Least Square-Structural Equation Modelling technique was employed to analyse 289 datasets from the Malaysian public procurement officers. The result showed that while procedural rationality is correlated strongly with groupthink, it had insignificant influence on the outcomes of groupthink - defective decision-making processes at the group level. Apparently, it fails to stop the defective decision-making process once the elements of groupthink have permeated the group. Recommendations are made for improving the composition of public procurement committees.