Analysis on the Bidding System of the Private SECURITY Business through Improvement in Republic of KOREA

Abstract

The national police service in Korea became incapable to satisfy demand for crime prevention and security as the Korean society has become urbanized. Despite the expansion of role and function of police, the shortage in absolute number of policeman and budget, outdated police equipments, excessive over-working time and work load, as a limiting factors, prevent police service from effective crime prevention. These inability of police service, a parent body of national security, to satisfy the expectation of citizens in qualitative and quantitative aspects, led to the increase in importance of private security industry. Especially, the realization that the public agency is no more a mechanism to protect private possessions and social activities due to problems such as absence of institutional safety device and accordingly, the increase of perception that 'My Safety by Myself' are contributing the creation of demands for private security. Most of private security companies, however, are struggling only for survival and profit instead of attempts to develop professional competence. In addition, the qualitative imbalance in security service due to the over-competition (lowest bid agreement, dumping agreement), absence of overall review for staff-related problems from supervision and coach to recruitment identity guarantee, and benefits due to lack of legal support, image depletion for private security companies because of various illegal acts, are all contributing to barrier to development of private safety industry and these factors may explain the qualitative stationary state despite the quantitative expansion of this field. The purpose of this study was to provide fundamental data to develop directions to address bid-related problems of private security fields such as bidding corruption, acquire fairness, transparency, and equality in order to propose an improvement measures ensuring qualitative efficiency by analyzing the current status of bidding system of domestic private security industry. The institutions that benefit whole stakeholders including users, companies, and security staffs, based on administrative transparency and fairness, need to be in place through improvement in bidding system in order to use effective private security service. The monogamous dominance of big private security company, in accordance with Security Industry Act may force small-medium companies that inferior in funds and man-power to be in poor performance, therefore, a measure should be sought to ensure both each specialization and whole growth of private security industry. For the qualitative development underpinning the quantitative growth of domestic private security industry, the bidding systems, based on improvement measures to mandate users to apply rightful bidding system and ensure administrative transparency and equitable opportunity, need to be in place. In other words, the bidding system in private sector may have advantages of simplicity in administration and saving of expense in short-term, however may cause qualitative problems such as over-competition, lowest price bidding, lowest wage in long-term in private security industry, therefore the improvement of bidding system is essential to promise development of domestic private security industry.