خرید استراتژیک، مدیریت عرضه، و عملکرد شرکت

Purchasing has increasingly assumed a pivotal strategic role in supply-chain management. Yet, claims of the strategic role of purchasing have not been fully subjected to rigorous theoretical and empirical scrutiny. Extant research has remained largely anecdotal and theoretically under-developed. In this paper, we examine the links among strategic purchasing, supply management, and firm performance. We argue that strategic purchasing can engender sustainable competitive advantage by enabling firms to: (a) foster close working relationships with a limited number of suppliers; (b) promote open communication among supply-chain partners; and (c) develop long-term strategic relationship orientation to achieve mutual gains. Using structural equation modeling, we empirically test a number of hypothesized relationships based on a sample of 221 United States manufacturing firms. Our results provide robust support for the links between strategic purchasing, supply management, customer responsiveness, and financial performance of the buying firm. Implications for future research and managerial practice in supply-chain management are also offered.

With the growing importance of supply-chain management, purchasing has assumed an increasingly pivotal strategic role, evolving from an obscure buying function into a strategic business partner (Ellram and Carr, 1994 and Cooper and Ellram, 1993). Researchers have documented how strategic purchasing actively participates in corporate planning process (Cavinato, 1999), facilitates beneficial organization-environment alignment (Carter and Narasimhan, 1996), and fosters cross-functional integration among supply-chain activities, among other things. Moreover, purchasing plays a key liaison role between external suppliers and internal organizational customers in creating and delivering value to external customers (Novack and Simco, 1991). Although the role of strategic purchasing in promoting cross-functional, intra-organizational relationships has been relatively well documented (Ellram and Carr, 1994 and Porter, 1985), its role in fostering effective strategic collaboration between a focal firm and its suppliers has not yet been rigorously investigated (Landeros and Monczka, 1989 and Young and Varble, 1997). Given the increasing emphasis on building and managing buyer–supplier relationships (or supply management) as the basis of sustainable competitive advantage ( Dyer and Singh, 1998, Kale et al., 2000 and Leenders et al., 2002), a systematic empirical investigation of the extent to which strategic purchasing contributes to the development of supply management capabilities is warranted. These capabilities include the firm’s ability to: (a) foster close working relationships with a limited number of suppliers; (b) promote open communication among supply-chain partners; and (c) develop long-term strategic orientation to achieve mutual gains. Collectively, these capabilities can engender sustainable competitive advantage by enabling a firm to build and leverage beneficial inter-organizational relationships. Additionally, extant research, though anecdotal and disjointed, has stressed that customer responsiveness is an essential component of competitive advantage ( Stalk and Hout, 1990, Jayaram et al., 1999 and Stank et al., 1999) and that purchasing and supply management can have a profound impact on a firm’s financial performance ( Ellram and Liu, 2002 and Singhal and Hendricks, 2002). Therefore, in this paper, we examine the extent to which strategic purchasing fosters supply management capabilities. Using structural equation modeling, we empirically investigate the relationships among strategic purchasing, supply management, customer responsiveness and financial performance. A systematic empirical investigation of these relationships would go a long way in establishing the extent to which strategic purchasing contributes to the firm’s “bottom line”. Furthermore, such an investigation would document the extent to which strategic purchasing, in fact, fosters the organizational capabilities necessary for effective supply-chain management. Structural equation modeling provides a robust basis for empirically corroborating or falsifying these claims. The rest of our paper is structured as follows. In Section 2, we develop a synthesis of the literature in dynamic capabilities to provide a conceptual foundation for our model. Then, we develop the logic of the substantive relationships among the study variables and state hypotheses. In Section 3, we explain our research methodology and analysis, including data collection procedure, construct operationalization and measurement, hypothesis testing and results. Section 4 presents discussion and implications of the study findings. In Section 5, we highlight limitations of the study along with suggestions for future research.

In an era of “alliance capitalism” (Gerlach, 1992), the ability to form and manage supply-chain relationships is a critical organizational asset that can generate durable strategic advantage. Based on this premise, this paper investigates the extent to which strategic purchasing fosters supply management capabilities, consisting of long-term orientation, limited number of suppliers, and communication. In turn, these capabilities contribute to enhancing customer responsiveness and financial performance for the buying firm. From a practical perspective, this study shows that not only can purchasing contribute directly to the firm’s bottom line; it is also a vitally important strategic partner in fostering supply management capabilities, which may generate durable strategic advantage. In addition to reinforcing previous research documenting the importance of managing buyer–supplier relationships for mutual benefits, this investigation also documents how supply management contributes to enhanced operational (i.e. customer responsiveness) and financial performance for the buying firm. Customer responsiveness may be considered an “output-based competency” that indicates how well value is delivered to customers, which in turn enhances a firm’s image, reputation, and legitimacy to its customers, suppliers and other stakeholders (Lado et al., 1992). At this point, it is important to acknowledge important limitations of our study that might provide opportunities for future research. During the instrument purification process, eight items were deleted in order to improve the reliability and validity of their underlying theoretical constructs. Thus, the construct of limited number of suppliers was reduced to only two items because three out of five indicators were deleted in this process. Though the factor exhibits acceptable reliability for the purposes at hand, future research should refine it and consider adding new indicators that more fully tap the construct. It should also be noted that supply management is a multi-dimensional construct; thus, future research may need to include other factors, such as supplier selection, supplier certification, and supplier integration. Also, the role of trust in engendering long-term, cooperative relationships and in simultaneously enhancing transaction value and reducing transaction costs needs to be more explicitly measured and assessed as an integral component of the supply management construct. Another limitation of this research concerns the sample population. Having drawn from a list of ISM members, we can only claim that the results of this research are generalizable to firms in that population. Although this study sample covered a wide range of firms in the ISM database in terms of industry membership and demographic variables, future research may need to include a broader population of firms, including service firms, as well as other domestic and international companies in order to expand the scope of generalizability of the results. Finally, this study focused on the buyer–supplier dyad as the unit of analysis, and assumed the buying firm’s perspective. As it “takes two to tango”, there is a need to more fully examine the nature of the exchange relationship from the supplier’s perspective in order to establish whether or not the relationship is reciprocal and mutually beneficial. Also, because dyadic, buyer–supplier relationships are embedded in larger supply-chain networks, future research needs to adopt the “strategic network” (Gulati et al., 2000) as a unit of analysis and investigate the extent to which such networks are competency enhancing or competency destroying for member firms. Despite these limitations, this study paves the way for researchers and managers to more fully capitalize on the potential of strategic purchasing to foster supply management capabilities.