IJSRSET1626144 | Received : 18 Dec. 2016 | Accepted : 31 Dec. 2016 | November-December-2016 [(2) 6: 630-640] © 2016 IJSRSET | Volume 2 | Issue 6 | Print ISSN: 2395-1990 | Online ISSN : 2394-4099 Themed Section: Engineering and Technology 630 Exogenous and Endogenous Factors in E-procurement Adoption among Ghanaian Hospitals : A Co-Integration Analysis Basil Kusi 1 , Henry Asante Antwi 1,2 , Gabriel Nani 3 , Samuel Owusu Mensah 1 , Michael Owusu Akomeah 1 1 School of Management, Jiangsu University, 301 Xuefu Road, Zhenjiang, Jiangsu, P.R. China 2 Institute of Medical Insurance and Healthcare Management, Jiangsu University, 3 College of Planning & Architecture, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, P.O. Box 67172, Kumasi, Ghana ABSTRACT Amidst all of the uncertainty surrounding the future of healthcare service efficiency in Ghana, the need for providers to do more things with less resources is widely considered a truism. Aware of the relative weight and significance of the supply chain, many hospitals in Ghana have initiated measures to fully adopt technology towards the performance of key healthcare activities. Using data collected from selected public hospitals in the Ashanti Region of Ghana, we recalibrate and classify the influential or stimulating factors of e-procurement adoption into exogenous and endogenous variables to determine the most influential factor. We employ a more sophisticated co-integration approach in order to observe robustness of outcome relative to the extant models. We observed that e-procurement optimization is premised on the prevalence of an ensemble of exogenous and endogenous factors including resources availability, facilitating conditions, system interoperability, supplier compatibility, regulatory framework, operational standards and benchmarks and other external/industry factors. Keywords: E-procurement, CPO, PPM, VECM, LNRa I. INTRODUCTION Health care represents a significant portion of today‟s service economy and there is much that has yet to be done to transfer the lessons learned from years of studying the manufacturing sector (Ballou-Aares, et al. 2009). As more and more research is published in this field, it is beginning to show that not only does health care operations benefit from the lessons learned in manufacturing, but unique findings in health care supply chain research are emerging that can also benefit the traditional manufacturing sector supply chain (Ballou- Aares, et al. 2009). Amidst all of the uncertainty surrounding the future of healthcare in Ghana, the need for providers to do more things with fewer resources is widely considered a truism. Similarly, looming cuts from government payers and increased scrutiny from private payers, employers and patients alike have forced many healthcare service providers to reconsider previous strategies as they embrace new levels of efficiency and effectiveness going forward (Blecker and Abdelkafi, 2006). This is because, after labor, supply chain typically represents the second highest operating expense ranging from one- third to one-half of the entire operating budget for the hospitals Blecker and Abdelkafi, 2006). Evidence from the public accounts committee on health services in the parliament of Ghana has noted that most healthcare facilities have not given supply chain initiatives commensurate attention and hence face severe but avoidable financial consequences accordingly (Afriyie, 2014). In Ghana, health care is ubiquitous with emotionally and politically charged debate regarding its design and accessibility to the public at large, yet one point that most people agree on is that there exists much potential for improving the efficiency and effectiveness of health care delivery (Agyepong, et al, 2016). A historic overview of the operation of Ghana‟s hospitals shows expansion of top-line revenue has blinded many of the administrators to bottom-line results that can be fostered through improved business processes. In addition to