The impact of strategic sourcing and E-procurement on supply chain performance management

Major changes are currently taking place within purchasing functions of manufacturing firms. Purchasing is shifting its focus from daily procurement activities to long term, value-adding purchasing and supply chain initiatives. At the same time, it is responding to the challenges and opportunities of electronic procurement （E-procurement）, which refers to the utilization of the internet to buy and sell products and services. The responsibilities of purchasing have changed markedly over the last few decades, purchasing focused heavily on the transactional elements of the procurement process. Purchasing was accepted as a support function that provides for the sourcing needs of other departments. The development of materials management and introduction of new manufacturing technologies in the 1970s brought pre-and post-production flows closer together. The manufacturing-purchasing interface strengthened, creating a need to align the buying cycle with production requirements. Purchasing started to create a ＂culture＂ that could help it to attain a more proactive role in the company and start taking responsibility in product design and development activities. The research reported here was undertaken to understand the impact of purchasing on this thesis supply chain performance by （1） investigating current and emerging E-procurement practices, （2） identifying the critical elements of strategic sourcing, and （3） assessing the impact of strategic souring and E-procurement on fn＇m and supply management performance through empirical investigation.     

Auditors’ going concern reporting accuracy during and after the global financial crisis

Motivated by concerns that one of the reasons for the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) is poor quality auditing, this study examines the accuracy of going concern modifications for a sample of United States (U.S.) companies in the pre-GFC (2005–2006), GFC (2007–2008), and post-GFC (2009–2010) periods. The results show that the type I misclassification is lower during the GFC but not different in the post-GFC period compared with the pre-GFC period. The type II misclassification is not significantly different in the GFC and post-GFC periods compared with the pre-GFC period. Additionally, the results suggest that non-Big 4 auditors, compared with Big 4 auditors, have become more conservative on clients’ going concern problems in the post-GFC period, which reduces their type II misclassification.