The Future of Purchasing and Supply Management Research: About Relevance and Rigor

• Author: Erik M. Raaij,Arjan J. Weele
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/jscm.12042
• Date: 01 January 2014
• Published date: 01 January 2014

THE FUTURE OF PURCHASING AND SUPPLY

MANAGEMENT RESEARCH: ABOUT RELEVANCE AND

RIGOR

ARJAN J. VAN WEELE

Eindhoven University of Technology

ERIK M. VAN RAAIJ

Erasmus University

The Journal of Supply Chain Management (JSCM) is a hallmark in the aca-

demic field of operations and supply chain management. During the past

50 years, it has contributed substantially to the recognition and adoption

of purchasing and supply management (PSM) as an academic and strate-

gic business domain. Having been invited by the JSCM editors to provide

some ideas on the future directions of PSM research, the authors discuss

what can be done to further increase both its relevance and rigor. Rigor

and relevance in academic research are interconnected. To improve its

relevance, the authors argue that future PSM research should better reflect

the strategic priorities raised in the contemporary strategic management

literature. Next, future PSM research should be much better embedded in

a limited number of management theories. Here, stakeholder theory, net-

work theory, the resource-based view of the firm, dynamic capabilities

theory, and the relational view could be considered as interesting candi-

dates. Rigor is connected with robustness of academic research designs

and projects. To foster its rigor, future PSM research should allow for an

increase in the number of replication studies, longitudinal studies, and

meta-analytical studies. Future PSM research designs should reflect a care-

ful distinction between informants and respondents and a careful sample

selection. When discussing the results of quantitative studies, future PSM

research should report on effect sizes and confidence intervals, rather than

p-values. Adoption of these ideas would have some important implications

for both the academic PSM community and academic journal editors.

Keywords: purchasing; supply management

INTRODUCTION

This article addresses the relevance and rigor of aca-

demic research in purchasing and supply management

(PSM). We discuss relevance in light of the strategic

role of purchasing. First, we provide a demarcation of

the PSM domain. Next, we present several findings

related to the role and importance of this domain in

mainstream strategic management literature. Then, we

present an overview of contemporary academic

research in purchasing. We demonstrate that PSM has

made considerable progress in terms of academic con-

tributions. However, these contributions do not neces-

sarily reflect strategic business issues and concepts. We

explore why this situation exists and whether this situ-

ation should be changed—and if so, what routes for

future research will be available. An important topic,

when addressing its relevance, is purchasing and

supply research rigor. Various shortcomings in con-

temporary academic PSM research are discussed.

Based upon our discussion, we propose some avenues

to improve both PSM research relevance and rigor to

Acknowledgments: The authors want to extend their gratitude to

Mirjam Kibbeling for her permission to use part of her work for

our introductory section and Bj€

orn Axelsson, Regien Sumo,

Kristine van Tubergen, and Marijn van Weele for their comments

on earlier versions of this paper.

Volume 50, Number 156

the benefit of business practitioners, researchers, and

editors of academic journals.

PSM: DEMARCATION OF THE FIELD

1

PSM is the discipline that is concerned with the

management of external resources—goods, services,

capabilities, and knowledge—that are necessary for

running, maintaining, and managing the primary and

support processes of a firm at the most favorable con-

ditions (Van Weele, 2010). Early references to the

function go as far back as 1832, and times of difficult

supply, such as wars and economic recessions, have

helped to establish PSM as a management discipline

(Leenders & Fearon, 2008). Accordingly, the economic

recession and supply disruptions of the 1970s put the

management of external resources high on the agenda

of firms (Kraljic, 1983; Monczka, Handfield,

Guinipero, Patterson, & Waters, 2010). This was also

the time that transaction cost economics (TCE)

emphasized cost efficiency in decisions about the

boundary of the firm and the governance of supplier

relationships (Williamson, 1981, 1991). Influenced by

such developments, PSM has traditionally had a

strong focus on cost reduction, through excellent

negotiating tactics and competitive contracting. This

cost focus still holds today for many researchers and

practitioners, many of whom argue that PSM’s added

value predominantly lies in cost reduction (Anderson,

Thomson, & Wynstra, 2000; Chen, Paulraj, & Lado,

2004; Gonz

alez-Benito, 2007).

Due to the increased outsourcing of business activi-

ties, PSM has developed into a functional domain of

strategic relevance (Carr & Pearson, 1999; Carter,

Monczka, Slaight, & Swan, 2000; Ellram & Carr,

1994; Gadde & H



akansson, 1994; Ogden, Petersen,

Carter, & Monczka, 2005). As suppliers gradually

became more important for the competitive posi-

tioning of the firm, research in the field examined

topics such as supplier relationship management

(Gelderman, 2003), collaborative networks (Holmen,

Pedersen, & Jansen, 2007; Joshi, 2009; Spekman &

Carraway, 2006), and early supplier involvement in

new product development (Choi, Wu, Ellram, & Koka,

2002; Van Echtelt, 2004; Wynstra, 1998). The term

“strategic purchasing” emerged in the literature

(Ellram & Carr, 1994), but developed into a concept

with a strong focus on the integration of the PSM

function with other functional domains within the

firm and the alignment of purchasing and supply

objectives with corporate objectives (Carr & Pearson,

1999; Wolf, 2005). The strategic positioning of the

discipline appears to focus more on the value-added

of the “purchasing function” than the value-added of

suppliers. The current research and literature remain

inconclusive about the nature of the contribution

firms may want to extract from their suppliers. This is

why the dominant focus of the purchasing and supply

domain still is on purchasing’s “bottom line” impact

through cost savings, quality improvement, and tech-

nology development (Trent & Monczka, 1998). The

question of how firms could or should create

customer and shared value (Porter & Kramer, 2006)

using their supplier networks receives far less

attention.

Supply chain management (SCM) involves a

broader perspective than PSM. SCM is the part of the

operations management discipline that examines

three or more organizations involved in the upstream

and downstream flows of products, services, finances,

and/or information from a source to a customer.

SCM typically focuses on the coordination of busi-

ness functions within and across organizations in a

supply chain, for the purposes of improving the

long-term performance of the individual organiza-

tions and the supply chain as a whole (Giunipero,

Hooker, Joseph-Matthews, Yoon, & Brudvig, 2008;

Mentzer et al., 2001). SCM research addresses topics

such as the bullwhip effect (Lee, Padmanabhan, &

Whang, 1997), supply chain capacity, sourcing deci-

sions, planning, and scheduling (Kouvelis, Chambers,

& Wang, 2006). Traditionally, SCM focuses on opti-

mizing goods and materials flows, the information

required for this, and selecting partners on strategic

fit to facilitate an efficient goods flow (Chen &

Paulraj, 2004; Mentzer, Min, & Zacharia, 2000). PSM,

as a more focused discipline, carries prime responsi-

bility for interaction with the upstream supply chain

(Schoenherr et al., 2012), but should fulfill this

responsibility with the needs of internal functions as

well as the downstream customer(s) interests and

demands in mind.

Today, SCM research has started to cover a broader

spectrum of research topics and includes, among

others, product and service development, quality man-

agement, logistics, information systems, and human

resources management to reflect the value of a firm’s

capabilities in both manufacturing and service supply

chains (Ellram, Tate, & Billington, 2004; Giunipero

et al., 2008; Sampson & Spring, 2012). Service

encounters within and between firms have become

key for business operations and typically involve

knowledge sharing, competencies, and a mutual

understanding between buyer and supplier to enable

optimal business-to-business service and goods

exchange (Rosenzweig & Roth, 2007; Van der Valk,

Wynstra, & Axelsson, 2009). Thus, SCM has moved

from a dominant focus on flows of goods and infor-

mation toward an increasing focus on how to

1

Original text by Kibbeling (2010, 17–20) was edited by the

authors with permission.

January 2014

The Future of PSM Research

57