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A lack of sourcing-specific team research prevents a full understanding of sourcing teamwork effectiveness (STE). Moreover, the limited purchasing and supply management (PSM) team literature often tends to focus on an aggregate group level. The paper makes a step towards adopting an individual actor perspective on teamwork effectiveness with an emphasis on the context of sourcing, explicating the effects of team-member knowledge, skills and abilities (KSAs), and examining how these relationships are moderated by a common learning experience of strategic sourcing masterclass.

Based on a cross-sectional survey, this study analyses a sample of 90 sourcing team members from a global aerospace manufacturing company using hierarchical regression analysis.

The results suggest that four of the five KSAs positively and significantly affect STE; the exception was collaborative problem solving. Masterclass learning outcomes were found to positively moderate the effects of these KSAs on STE, again exclusive of the collaborative problem-solving KSA.

Cross-sectional design focused only on the aerospace sector may affect generalizability. Further, longitudinal research designs would capture the effects of the common learning experience over an extended period.

Sourcing team members could be selected based on having KSAs which significantly affect teamwork effectiveness. Training and development for sourcing teams should combine guided reflexivity and cross-training to deliver learning outcomes that create similar team mental models.

The study provides an individual team-member perspective on the functioning of sourcing teams which is absent in the extant research. It contributes to the very limited research base on skills in PSM.

Notes that outsourcing is just one of the means by which the boundary of the firm can be adjusted. Considers various other means such as conglomeration and horizontal and vertical integration. Focuses on outsourcing and its place in this bigger picture and discusses the history of outsourcing. Outlines concerns for managers and gives case examples from Rank Zerox and BP.

A significant feature of business management in the 1990s has been the practice of outsourcing. Firms and public sector bodies have reconsidered where the boundary of their organisation should be set, and passed to third parties responsibility for many business activities. However, many firms have been disappointed with the results they have achieved from outsourcing, not least when it has concerned high profile functions such as information technology. Part of the reason for this disappointment, it is argued, lies in the methodologies (or lack of them) which have been employed by managers. Very few have taken into account the main risks of the practice or identified the required safeguards. This article seeks to address these shortcomings by presenting a model for effective risk management. The article also provides a case study – outsourcing at Hewlett‐Packard – which shows what can be achieved if managers use the right criteria for their decisions.

This paper reports the findings of a two‐year EPSRC funded research project into relationship and performance strategies in power regimes. The findings from 12 very different industrial and service sector cases studies demonstrate that there is a correlation between the ability to improve the performance of suppliers and the power circumstances that exist between the buyers and suppliers. Buyers appear to be able to achieve improved performance from suppliers in situations of buyer dominance or interdependence. The research also demonstrates that whatever the objective power circumstance managers often subjectively misperceive the appropriate sourcing choices available to them. As a result business relationships can be aligned, but they are often misaligned. Furthermore, misaligned relationships may be “remediable” but they may not.

This paper explores the relationship power, appropriateness in relationship management and the commercial outcomes in buyer and suppler exchange by analyzing the recent history of the involvement of BSkyB in particular, and television companies in general, in the English football supply chain network. The paper describes the major players in the chain and where and how value flows commercially between the major protagonists in the network. The paper shows that although the Premiership football clubs have received an enormous increase in revenue over the last ten years this has not been translated into higher (or in some cases any profits). This is because the club's ability to leverage their customers is not capable of being used against their key suppliers – the players. It is the players (or at least those perceived to be the most talented and saleable) who have been appropriating the major share of value in this supply chain network.

The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of research in the Department of Information Studies at the University of Wales Aberystwyth and an introduction to the papers in the special issue.

A narrative review of the previous research activities and contemporary research environment of the Department of Information Studies.

There is more to be learnt about the future of the research assessment exercise, whether it is moving to a metrics‐based system, or whether the system will look more favourably on departments that attract a range of research funding.

Identifies how changes in the scope of research activities in a department reflect changes in research funding and structures for the information sector, as well as changes in staff interests.

Explains some of the thinking that informs both the case study articles that appear in the same issue of Supply Chain Management: An International Journal and the EPSRC funded research project currently being undertaken at the Centre for Business Strategy and Procurement. A review is provided of the dominant ideas that currently inform “supply chain management thinking”. This paradigm is characterised as operational effectiveness and efficiency. A case is made for understanding supply chains from a strategic as well as from an operational perspective. Current supply chain management thinking is criticised for being atheoretical and descriptive, and a case is made for an analytical approach to supply chain thinking based around the concepts of power and value appropriation. A more analytically robust way of understanding supply chains is laid out.