Creating strategic change in procurement orientation: A strategy for improving competitiveness

The changes in the business environment with technological breakthroughs and crumbling national barriers are pressuring firms to become more efficient and entrepreneurial in order to compete in globalized markets. To meet these pressures is no simple task. Far-sighted exeutives are responding by initiating wrenching revisions of their firm's competitive postures, internal controls and corporate cultures. All these changes are forcing top management to alter its expectations of its purchasing organization. No longer can firms create, design, launch, and provide viable products throughout their life cycles without regard to the supply aspects of the material and components that go into them. The paper proposes a model for achieving a purchasing orientation change strategy, and argues the need for the purchasing organization to be strategically oriented to improve the company's competitive posture in the marketplace.