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Bad Buying

How organizations waste billions through failures, frauds and f*ck-ups

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Manipulating the specification for procurement fraud

One of the more creative ways of committing procurement-related fraud is by the manipulation of specifications. It requires a little more skill than simply bribing a decision maker to choose your firm  or over-invoicing a client and hoping…
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Can politics learn from the ethics of procurement?

The headlines in the UK have been dominated in recent days about whether it is acceptable for politicians to receive gifts and hospitality from political donors. The new Labour government has come under fire for taking money to buy clothing…

Peter Smith’s Bad Buying Podcast

The Bad Buying Playlist

With this Bad Buying website we aim to shine a fearless spotlight on the things that go wrong with corporate buying and procurement – failures, frauds and f**k-ups, as I like to say. That does also mean highlighting and celebrating some of the positive ways in which organisations can avoid Bad Buying, as well as sticking the boot in when criticism is deserved. Fraud and corruption are also prevalent in the world of buying, and too often public and private sector bodies globally get away with some truly awful buying processes, practices and decisions that rarely get exposed and analysed. We aim to address that, and as any entrepreneur will tell you, we learn more from our mistakes than our successes. So we hope Bad Buying can help in that way too!

(Picture courtesy Justine Stoddart)

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