Agility,adaptability, and alignment: new capabilities for PSM in a post-pandemic world

Purchasing and Supply Management (PSM) was overwhelmed by a perfect storm during the Covid-19 emergency, in both the public and private sectors. Many organizations were caught unprepared, and it became evident that they did not have the capabilities needed to quickly react and respond to changes caused by the pandemic. This poses the questions of where and how PSM systems should evolve to better contribute to organizational responsiveness to crisis events in the future. In this Editorial, which introduces the “PSM learning from the pandemic: transforming for better crisis management” Notes and Debates special issue, the six contributions included in this issue are discussed. We relate the evidence included in the contribution to three critical capabilities of supply chains in the post-Covid-19 business environment – agility, adaptability, and alignment – and, in this editorial, we discuss how they can be conceptualized from a PSM perspective. From a theoretical perspective, we provide a starting point for future studies that want to focus on how these capabilities can be deployed in PSM, and how they impact the supply network design. From a managerial perspective, these definitions provide preliminary points of discussion on what organizations can do to enhance these capabilities in the future.     

Editorial: From judge to jury: the potential for crowd reviewing

In this editorial, we introduce the four best papers selected from the IPSERA 2021 conference for this special issue of the Journal. We discuss how a double-blind crowd review (CR) process was used as an alternative to the traditional “two reviewer” double-blind peer review system. After a brief review of the literature and the existing debate around academic peer review, we introduce the main characteristics of CR. Next, at the core of our discussion, we report on the results of a pilot CR project that we conducted to review JPSM articles associated with the 2021 IPSERA Conference. We describe in detail the review process, and we illustrate the feedback received from reviewers and authors on the CR process, as well as our perspective as guest editors. Finally, we draw some conclusions and present recommendations for CR in the Purchasing and Supply Management (PSM) field. The CR pilot contributes to the wider debate around peer-reviewing by offering insights into the experience of different stakeholders and by highlighting the benefits and pitfalls of CR.     

Transitions,opportunities and challenges – Change and continuity at JPSM

Purchasing and supply management (PSM) scholarship is experiencing a significant expansion across numerous academic institutions around the globe and is attracting more attention from policy-makers than ever before. After nearly three decades since its inception, the Journal of Purchasing and Supply Management (JPSM) has stayed true to its founding purpose of advancing and fostering cutting edge research in the PSM discipline, in its broadest sense, and has pursued its mission to be the journal of choice among PSM scholars. This editorial is both retrospective, and prospective: it marks the transition of JPSM's leadership team. Outgoing and incoming Editors together provide an overview of what has been achieved during the past six years, offer perspectives on the journal policies and on growth opportunities, and discuss some critical areas for the evolution of PSM research.     

Evolving Purchasing and Supply Organizations: A contingency model for structural alternatives

Purchasing and Supply Management (PSM) is under significant pressure to find levers to further increase its contribution to corporate goals. In order to improve performance in line with expectations, Purchasing and Supply Organizations (PSOs) have to evolve continuously. To help address this challenge, a comprehensive contingency framework of PSO structures is presented. The framework is based on existing literature on PSO contingency factors as well as analysis of two case companies. The findings highlight the importance of taking a contingency perspective for understanding the PSO and combining a detailed view of macro-level structural dimensions with micro-level characteristics. These macro-level dimensions comprise category, business unit, geography and activity. The micro-level characteristics comprise centralization, formalization, specialization, participation and standardization. From a theoretical perspective, the contingency framework opens up insights that can be leveraged in future studies in the fields of hybrid PSOs, global sourcing organizations, and International Purchasing Offices (IPOs). From a practical standpoint, an assessment of external and internal contingencies and their relation to specific structural dimensions and characteristics provides the opportunity for more consciously evolving the PSO to continue to improve PSM's contribution.     

Making sense of the impact of the internet of things on Purchasing and Supply Management:A tension perspective

The Internet of Things (IoT) is transforming how industries operate. It impacts on firms’ supply networks, business processes and business models. This article describes how the IoT influences the Purchasing and Supply Management (PSM) function. Our findings based on interviews and workshop with more than 200 senior European purchasing managers from large corporations suggest that PSM has opportunities to support the development of IoT solutions within firms which are required to work with dynamic and complex markets. At the same time, the IoT supports the development of a more capable and efficient PSM organisation. As part of this early stage theory building effort, we outline scenarios for the future of the PSM function. This leads us to reflect on how PSM leaders manage IoT-related tensions by means of differentiation and integration tactics.     

Purchasing and supply management's identity: Crisis? What crisis?

Purchasing and Supply Management (PSM) has been subjected to a number of examinations, all concluding that PSM is not an academic discipline as it lacks its own theories and common themes of research. It is perceived by many as an applied social science and field of research applying theories from other disciplines. But, to date, these examinations have not revealed more definitively what PSM is, i.e., its identity. This Notes and Debates paper was stimulated by two focused meetings, a question panel at IPSERA 2019 and solicited views from IPSERA participants. These were synthesized and developed through grounding them in identity and social identity theories. They are provided to stimulate the debate on PSM's internal and external identity coherence and legitimacy.     

Achieving efficiency and effectiveness in Purchasing and Supply Management: Organization design and outsourcing

As a function with a strategic role, Purchasing and Supply Management (PSM) needs to continuously find ways to improve its efficiency and effectiveness. One potential way to specifically addressing efficiency targets is to outsource parts of the purchasing process. While outsourcing remains one of the most prevalent business practices in various areas, many businesses fail to realize the benefits anticipated from their outsourcing initiatives. Research reports that one major reason for these outsourcing challenges lies in the design of the focal organization. In this paper, we take an organization design view to outsourcing in the PSM context. Based on a multi-year case study from 2010 to 2013 at a global chemical and pharmaceutical company, we elaborate how the organizational design of the PSM function relates to outsourcing opportunities in order to increase efficiency and effectiveness by allocating internal resources to more value-adding activities. The case illustrates how an activity-based organizational design of PSM can support outsourcing of some parts of the purchasing process.     

Vision 20/20: Preparing today for tomorrow's challenges

This special issue includes five of the best papers presented at the 20th IPSERA conference. This conference was organized by Maastricht University and took place in Maastricht, The Netherlands. The conference theme was: ‘Vision 20/20: Preparing today for tomorrow's challenges’. In this editorial we discuss the future challenges in Purchasing and Supply Management and how one can prepare for these today. We make use of the concept of weak signals to detect a number of emerging future trends. All abstracts of the 110 conference papers were analysed using text mining and tag clouds. Also we introduce the five papers that were selected by the conference reviewers and track chairs as the best papers of the conference.     

Advancing purchasing as a design science: Publication guidelines to shift towards more relevant purchasing research

Due to rapidly changing business environments, purchasing and supply management (PSM) organisations are constantly confronted with new problems impacting organisational performance. PSM research can address these problems through design science research. Design science is also regarded as the science of the artificial. Design science research is a methodology that aims to systematically generate knowledge for the design, synthesis, testing, and evaluation of human-made artefacts (e.g., tools, interventions, policies) that solve practical problems. PSM artefacts such as the purchasing portfolio matrix invented by Kraljic (1983) represent a valuable opportunity to solve problems in the PSM discipline. However, our artificial-intelligence (AI)-based analysis of the discipline's flagship journal, the Journal of Purchasing and Supply Management (JPSM), indicates that design-oriented publications in PSM are underrepresented, accounting for less than 4% of the total publications. We argue that existing PSM research should be complemented with more design-oriented research, and address the following research question: How can PSM scholars publish more design-oriented research? Our objectives are to (1) provide arguments for advancing PSM as a design science, (2) nurture a better understanding of design science research as a methodology, and (3) propose publication guidelines that enable researchers to present design-oriented research in a management journal.     

Purchasing and supply management as a multidisciplinary research field: Unity in diversity?

Since the 1960s, research on Purchasing and Supply Management (PSM) has grown substantially, but in recent times various scholars have challenged the actual progress and coherence of the field. In delivering such critiques, the underlying, dominant view of PSM research is that it constitutes an academic discipline. In contrast, we offer an alternative perspective that views PSM as a multi-disciplinary field of research, drawing from Operations Management, Marketing and Strategy & Organization as reference disciplines. Adopting this perspective, we conduct a review of 2522 purchasing and supply management publications in a multi-disciplinary set of 18 high-impact management journals, published in the period 1995–2014. We analyse how PSM research has developed over time; quantitatively and content-wise, in terms of the topics and theories being addressed. We find that across the three reference disciplines and the specialist PSM journals, there is diversity, with distinct features of each journal group in terms of the one or two most popular topics or theories. Still, considering the full base of PSM publications in each journal group, there is considerable overlap. Supplier Relationship Management is a popular topic throughout, and the top-5 of topics for each of the journal groups demonstrates a high degree of overlap, in any given lustrum period. With one exception, TCE is the most popular for all journal groups for all periods and of the 17 different theories identified, only four have been applied by just one journal group. Thus, we conclude that PSM research is characterised by ‘unity in diversity’: “E Pluribus Unum”, and offer recommendations how this multi-disciplinary composition of the field can be leveraged in future research.     

Understanding politics in PSM teams: A cross-disciplinary review and future research agenda

Purchasing and Supply Management (PSM) decisions, such as make-or-buy or vendor selections, are highly dependent on the cooperation of several functions in decision-making teams in order to make more holistic and effective decisions. However, members of cross-functional PSM teams often also pursue diverse goals rooted in functional incentive structures that may lead to misalignment and competition. One of the resulting problems are so-called “organizational politics”, being self-serving influence attempts among functional representatives. Examples can be nondisclosure of information, coalitions, or lobbying to protect unidimensional functional interests that potentially obstruct effective PSM decision making. So far, PSM scholars have made exploratory and inductive inquiries in team politics while the larger body of research on politics exists outside the PSM scope. Thus, as PSM scholarship transcends toward deductive theory testing designs on team politics, the fields is at risk taking isolated perspectives and failing to deduce from the extant disaggregated “general management” literature on politics. In response to this emerging trend, we review 91 contributions to the organizational literature on politics at the individual, team or group, and dyadic (individual-individual) level to build a future research framework on politics in real-world cross-functional PSM decision-making teams. To do so, we distinguish thematic areas of interest and derive future avenues for research in light of ongoing PSM debates on human resource management in PSM, leadership in PSM teams, and top management support of PSM. Furthermore, we derive epistemological, instrumental, and theoretical guidance on how to approach politics in cross-functional PSM teams.     

浅论高职院校《采购与供应管理》课程建设——以海南经贸职业技术学院为例

作为紧缺物流管理人才培养基地的现代高职教育,文章就本院物流管理专业中《采购与供应管理》课程改革的相关困难进行了探讨和分析,并结合教学实践提出了一些提高实践教学质量的改进措施。     

Purchasing and supply management (PSM) competencies: Current and future requirements

Purchasing & Supply Management (PSM) competencies are the individual-level foundations of organisational PSM performance. In light of recent developments in the workplace and the external environment, the question of what PSM competencies are needed now, as well as in the future, becomes one of increasing importance. Analysing qualitative data from 46 interviews from 16 companies, this paper identifies what current and future competencies are required by PSM professionals, categorizes PSM competencies according to the framework established by Tassabehji and Moorhouse (2008) and establishes how these competency requirements have changed over the last ten years. The most important current competencies required by PSM professionals are negotiation, communication and relationship management (e.g. ‘Interpersonal communication’), strategy and analytics (e.g. ‘Strategic thinking’), as well as professional knowledge requirements (e.g. ‘Basic knowledge on PSM role & processes’). When looking at future requirements, competencies in the areas of sustainability and digitisation were identified as becoming increasingly important. Overall, 17 competencies in addition to those shown in Tassabehji and Moorhouse (2008) were identified. The most prominent new competency areas are related to digitisation (e.g. ‘eProcurement Technology’, ‘Automation’), innovation (e.g. ‘Innovative sourcing’) and sustainability. The interviewees also identified 11 new competencies within the interpersonal skills cluster, most of them at the intersection between competencies and traits (e.g. ‘Deal with Ambiguity’, ‘Curiosity’, ‘Passion’).     

Guest Editorial: A purchasing and supply management view of supply resilience for better crisis response

Purchasing and supply management (PSM) has been under great pressure since the COVID-19 pandemic first shook the world. Companies and public organizations faced new kinds of supply disruptions, and at a scale never seen before. New response abilities were required from PSM to address these challenges and disruptions. This Editorial introduces four articles in the Special Issue on “PSM learning from the pandemic: transforming for better crisis management.” These empirical contributions show how companies could build resilience to survive and be competitive during the COVID-19 pandemic. This Editorial discusses how supply resilience should be conceptualized in post-pandemic supply chains adopting a PSM perspective. We suggest that supply resilience practices should be developed and planned according to whether they strengthen existing supply chain relationships (bridging) or establish new ones (buffering) and whether they are short-term (temporary) or long-term (permanent) orientated. Furthermore, three supply resilience capabilities, absorbing, responding and capitalizing, should be prioritized in supply chains for responding to and recovering from global crises and disruptions. Supply resilience is key to crisis response and recovery, and PSM has an essential role in building and sustaining that resilience.     

《采购与供应管理》课程教学改革研究

随着企业对采购认识的逐步深入,企业越来越重视采购的战略地位,对采购人才也提出了更多专业性要求。《采购与供应管理》课程重在培养学生对采购基础理论知识以及相关策略和技能的掌握和应用能力,基于该课程实践性强的特点以及社会对采购专业人才实践能力的要求,结合实际,在分析该课程教学中存在的问题基础上,有针对性地提出了以业务流程为主线优化课程体系等解决方案。     

浅析供应链质量管理的挑战与对策

文中从供应链发展趋势分析入手，阐述了供应链质量管理的概念及演变。通过对供应链质量管理当前面临的几个矛盾点的分析，提出了解决这些矛盾的思路和方向。     

The impact of evolutionary and developmental metaphors on Purchasing and Supply Management: A critique

A widespread consensus has emerged in the Purchasing and Supply Management (PSM hereafter) field arguing that purchasing and supply activities may be allocated to the categories of ‘strategic’ and ‘non-strategic’. Whereas strategic activities are associated with higher inter-organisational status, non-strategic activities are regarded as generating low levels of status. Consequently, purchasing functions can obtain more intra-organisational status by focussing their efforts on strategic activities, and they should thus be encouraged to undergo this change, which may usefully be described as following an evolutionary or developmental path from a clerical to a strategic focus. The paper seeks to demonstrate the strength of the consensus surrounding these ideas by conducting a wide-ranging literature survey, challenges the validity of that consensus and empirically tests its influence on practitioner attitudes and behaviours. Abundant evidence is found to support the proposition that a consensus has emerged. The validity of this consensus is challenged in a variety of ways, particularly with reference to the distribution of large and small companies in the economy. The pilot study confirms that practitioners have absorbed the consensus view promulgated by academia. The undesirable effects of the bias against certain types of activity on functional and overall organisational effectiveness are considered, and recommendations are made for both practitioners and academics working in the subject area.     

Reflections on longitudinal action research with the English National Health Service

This paper reflects on a longitudinal collaborative action research programme between the Centre for Research in Strategic Purchasing and Supply and the UK National Health Service Purchasing and Supply Agency that has operated since 1995. During the collaboration, research has changed practice and practice has changed research. A framework for analysing change is introduced as a means of examining how supply strategy has changed during the course of the research. The framework is applied to three supply strategy cases of prosthetics, clinical waste and cardiology, illustrating how practice and research have changed and influenced the production of knowledge over time. The methodological, theoretical and managerial implications of such longitudinal action research programmes are reflected on.     

Future business and the role of purchasing and supply management: Opportunities for ‘business-not-as-usual’ PSM research

The raison d'être for this article is simple: traditional ways of researching, theorizing, and practicing purchasing and supply management (PSM) are no longer sufficient to ‘meet the moment’. Scholars need to advance a “business-not-as-usual” footing approach to their work, if they are to make a meaningful contribution to addressing the current and future emergencies, as highlighted by recent extreme weather and the COVID-19 pandemic. Yet, what can this, or should this, mean for a field rooted in traditional business thinking? This article builds on the Journal of Purchasing and Supply Management's (JPSM) 25th Anniversary Special Issue editorial (2019); members of the JPSM's editorial team advance their unique perspectives on what “business-not-as-usual” means for PSM. Specifically, we advocate both thinking much more widely, in scope and ambition, than we currently do, and simultaneously building our ability to comprehend supply chains in a more nuanced and granular way. We explore whether the bias toward positivist work has omitted potentially interesting findings, and viewpoints. This leads to a call to re-think how we approach our work: should the key criteria always be to focus on theory development or testing? Should academics “think bigger”? Turning to specific research themes, illustrations of how our current thinking can be challenged or broadened by addressing the circular economy, and role of purchasing and innovation. Specifically, the focus on the PSM function as an intrapreneur within the larger organization, and the role of innovation and technology in PSM work. Taken together, we hope the ideas and arguments presented here will inform and inspire ambitious and novel approaches to PSM research with significant and enduring impact on the transformation of business.