Considering Small and Medium-Sized Suppliers in Public Procurement—The Case of the German Defence Sector Michael Eßig and Andreas H. Glas Abstract The consideration of Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises (SMEs) in tender processes is an important goal of public procurement regulation. Public procurement law sets the rule to divide contracts in smaller lots as SMEs are expected to have better chances for a lot than for the whole task. This assumption is questioned with data from the German defence sector. This investigation deter- mines the percentages of SMEs participating in and winning public tenders as well as the specific factors that influence award decisions. Key finding is that an increase in lot-wise calls will normally not lead to an increase in successful SME partici- pation in public procurement processes. This is unexpected because lot-wise tenders are considered to be the main tool available to public procurement agents to increase the ability of SMEs to participate in and win public tenders. 1 Introduction Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises (SMEs) are considered to be an important economic factor, for example, as employers and innovators (Zheng et al. 2006; Denes 1997). SMEs are of strategic importance for the economy as they together employ the majority of work force (up to 70 %) (Mudambi and Schründer 1996). Therefore, the promotion of SMEs is one of the social aspects attached to the procurement task of public institutions (Kidalov and Snider 2011; Carter 2004). This becomes even more important as an increasing volume of public tenders can be witnessed and the opening of the European market increased public procurement competition (Perlo-Freeman et al. 2009). However, further research on SME par- ticipation in public tendering is required, because academic discussions of this topic are rather rare and often rudimentary (Karjalainen and Kemppainen 2008; M. Eßig  A.H. Glas (&) Research Center for Law and Management of Public Procurement, Bundeswehr University Munich, 85577 Neubiberg, Germany e-mail: andreas.glas@unibw.de © Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2016 D. Mattfeld et al. (eds.), Logistics Management, Lecture Notes in Logistics, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-20863-3_2 19