Issak Maalim Adow¹, Paul Edabu^1,, Githui Kimamo¹

The purpose of this study was to analyze the influence of compliance with ethical procurement practices on management of public secondary school resources in Mandera County, Kenya. The study was guided by The Procurement Transaction and Resource Based View Theories. Mixed methods approach was used and thus the study adopted concurrent triangulation design. Stratified sampling was used to create 6 different strata based on number of sub-counties in Mandera County. The tendering and procurement committee members were 13 and 30 members of school Board of Management were selected using simple random sampling. This procedure enabled the researcher to sample 13 principals, 76 tendering and procurement committee members, 176 members of school Board of Management and 2 QASOs. Questionnaires, Focus Group Discussion and Interviews were used. Qualitative data was analyzed thematically and presented in narrative forms whereas quantitative data was descriptively analyzed and inferentially using ANOVA. The study revealed that 103(59.9%) of the members of School Board of Management strongly agreed with the view that secondary schools rarely comply with moral ethics in procurement which has not enhanced financial prudence, staff relations, curriculum support resources and infrastructural development in secondary schools. It also indicates that the results were statistically significant (p-value=0.034<0.05) and that there was significant difference between frequency of compliance with ethical practices in procurement and means of wastages in vote heads set for infrastructural development, staffing and curriculum support resources. The study also established that secondary schools rarely comply with ethical practices in procurement despite an express requirement that all school staff members comply with all the ethical procurement practices. The study recommends that ethical levels of behavior of procurement staff must be ensured as it influences the performance in the school.

influence, compliance, school resources, ethical procurement practices and management