Purchasing Management and the Role of Uncertainty

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the role of uncertainty in purchasing and supply management, and the changes of this role over time. The paper is based on a literature review of the development of purchasing and supply management over time and how these issues have been related to uncertainty and dependence. This examination also required analysis of the impact of other concepts from behavioral sciences: interdependence, power and control. The paper shows that the relationship between purchasing management and uncertainty has changed substantially over time. Traditionally, uncertainty was avoided, while firms today are engaged in efforts of handling the consequences of uncertainty. This modification affected the features of buyer-supplier relationships, as well as the perspectives and the exploitation of power, control and dependence. The paper demonstrates both positive and negative consequences of uncertainty, depending on the approach applied in purchasing. Moreover, the analysis shows that uncertainty cannot be avoided. Modifications of purchasing management will reduce certain types of uncertainty. But the same modification also results in increases of other forms of uncertainty

Purchasing superior-value offerings effectively and successfully

In business markets price still plays a significant part in selling and buying decisions. Suppliers strive to get an equitable or fair return on the value of their offerings and buyers look for bargains and usually find them, thanks to over-eager suppliers. However, recent experiments show that there are other more effective and successful ways of selling witho

Unraveling the dimensions of supplier involvement and their effects on NPD performance: a meta-analysis

We study the relationship between supplier involvement in New Product Development and performance. The current literature is scattered and fragmented with studies reporting mixed empirical evidence for a variety of concepts related to ‘Early Supplier Involvement’. We conduct a systematic review and meta‐analysis of the existing literature to reconcile conflicted findings, revise and refine theoretical perspectives, and provide evidence‐based scholarly and practical implications. To achieve these aims, we unravel the general relationship by considering three factors. First, we delineate different types of performance outcomes, mainly related to NPD efficiency (e.g., speed) and NPD effectiveness (e.g., product quality). Second, we distinguish between the moment and the extent of supplier involvement, related to different theoretical perspectives on external knowledge integration. Third, we disentangle multiple levels of analysis that are seemingly obscured in the literature, specifically the project and organizational levels. We find that extensive supplier involvement has positive effects on NPD efficiency and effectiveness, whereas earlier supplier involvement only to some degree affects NPD efficiency and not effectiveness. In conclusion, our meta‐analysis based on 11,420 observations from 51 studies provides strong theoretical and practical insights on the important phenomenon of supplier involvement

Problem-solving in healthcare services procurement

__Abstract__ With the recent founding of the Purchasing and Supply Management Centre at RSM, solutions are becoming available for the growing number of companies who are investing in the complex territory of services procurement

The impact of purchasing strategy-structure (mis)fit on purchasing cost and innovation performance

The organizational design literature strongly supports the notion of “structure follows strategy”, and suggests that a misfit between the two has a negative effect on performance. Building on this line of argument, we examine to what extent the (mis)fit between purchasing strategy and purchasing structure impacts purchasing performance. We focus on cost and innovation purchase category strategies, and examine how the deviation from an ideal purchasing structure defined along three dimensions (centralization, formalization, and cross-functionality) impacts purchasing performance. Analysing data collected from 469 firms in ten countries, we demonstrate that a strategy-structure misfit negatively impacts purchasing performance in both cost and innovation strategies. We also find that purchasing proficiency is a mediator in this relationship between misfit and performance. Our findings aid managerial decision making by empirically validating the necessity of having the right purchasing structure for successfully executing different purchasing strategies

In Chains? Automotive Suppliers and Their Product Development Activities

A conceptual framework is developed and tested in which supplier downstream position in the supply chain, supplier innovation strategy and customer development commitment are seen as the antecedents of supplier product development activity. Using partial least squares (PLS), we analyze the results of a survey of 161 Swedish automotive suppliers and test a series of nested models to test our hypotheses. We demonstrate that the position of the supplier in the supply chain and its strategic focus on innovation not only have a direct impact on (actual) supplier product development activity, but that there is also an interaction effect, implying that the effects of strategy are contingent on the supplier???s supply chain position. Additionally, we find that customer development commitment does not have any significant direct effect on supplier product development activities, but that this relation is fully mediated by supplier innovation strategy. The meaning of the findings for developing a more extensive conceptual framework for understanding supplier product development activities, some managerial implications, and future research are discussed