Organising purchasing and (strategic) sourcing: towards a typological theory

The role of purchasing has changed over the past two to three
decades. The focus is no longer limited to purchasing manufacturing inputs, but
also includes sourcing of innovations from, and even co-developing
technologies together with, suppliers. Furthermore, purchasing has obtained a
much more mature role in corporate strategy. These changes have serious
implications for the purchasing process, its characteristics and organisation.
Previous research indicates that none of the prevailing solutions, functional
departments and cross-functional teams, embedded in a centralised,
decentralised or hybrid overall structure, deliver the expected results.
Contingency theory predicts that the success of a firm depends on the fit among
characteristics of, amongst others, the firm’s processes and organisational
structure. The objective of this paper is to propose and illustrate a processbased
typological theory of purchasing and (strategic) sourcing organisation.