Abstract

The role played by governmental institutions for accelerating the diffusion of electronic public procurement (e‑PP) is analyzed in this paper. Such analysis is interesting for institutions encouraging the diffusion of e‑Government because they are not objective third party intermediaries instead they are part of the government. The paper is written based on an embedded case study carried out to enquire the challenges faced by the Danish public sector in the diffusion of e‑procurement. The actions taken by the ministry of science, technology and innovation in Denmark are analyzed under the following sections; knowledge building, knowledge deployment, subsidy, mobilization, standard setting and innovation directive. The analysis yields six conjectures and it shows that as public administration is politically managed, the Danish government seeks mainly to influence and not regulate the supply and demand sides. A regulatory action may be misinterpreted as a move to alter power structures within the public administration.