Thank you for a most comprehensive response!

Despite sophisticated procurement approaches such as e-procurement and other business intergrated systems that improve on the control environment, nothing can substitute a man’s integrity especially where discretion behaviour is required.

Since procurement function is in charge of executing the organisation spend, measures should be put in place that limit any form of leakage due to moral hazards or opportunistic behaviour. Some of the measures could include:

- Improving the control environment by using technology that has good controls e.g SAP or other e-procurement tools. Its worth noting that technology is as good as the people using it, but it does give some consistency.
-Clear segragation of duties between the procurement and user departments. Users need to be involved in the purchase decision.
- Top managers should be great role models- this unfortuntaely is usually not the case and the rank and file perfect what they have learnt from their masters.
- Have a clear and transparent procurement policies and tendering process. Risk analysis and mitigation should be proactive and not waiting for the embezzlement to happen and then sending troops of auditors after the ‘party’ is over!
- Superior recruitment process- the organisation should try as much as possible to get the right people (of integrity) in the organisation in the first place.Seek out for references on the prospective employees and get to know what kind of people they are and what drives them.
- Organisation culture. Generally treat employees fairly, give them fair rewards for their performance. A robust performance management system will weed out those not consistently living the values of the company while rewarding those that are performing well and portraying the right behaviours.