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Little is known about actual price savings generated by cooperative purchasing and nonmonetary advantages, disadvantages and impediments for the cooperative purchasing of complex or high-risk purchases. This paper aims to explore these topics by studying joint purchasing of pacemakers in The Netherlands.

To evaluate the magnitude of price savings, data on individual and collective prices for 18 hospitals was analyzed. In addition, 16 interviews were carried out with representatives of hospitals that participated and did not participate in the joint purchase.

Based on quantitative and qualitative data, the authors found large differences in price savings which can be attributed to scale, but mostly to knowledge of the group and renewing a contract in a technology-driven and developing market. Limited product choice – because of an organization joining a cooperative – constrained the attractiveness of cooperative purchasing, as end users may have specific product preferences. The consideration of preferences of end users is important toward successful joint purchasing of complex items.

The authors argue that price savings because of scale are about 7% for smaller organizations and 4% for larger organizations. For smaller organizations with low specific knowledge and capacity for buying complex products, economies of process and knowledge are more important reasons for joining a purchasing group than scale. For large organizations with high specific knowledge and capacity, scale is the most important reason.

This study combined qualitative and quantitative perspectives, using actual spend data, to investigate cooperative purchasing of high-risk or complex purchases. On the one hand, more insight into the magnitude and reasons for price savings is provided than in earlier literature. On the other hand, more insight is given in qualitative reasons for joining a group and challenges for cooperative purchasing of complex items.

The article deals with issues such as the size of a purchasing group, the types of benefits aimed for, and the real beneficiaries of purchasing groups.

The observations are based on the literature, as well as on interviews, mostly with Canadian and US health‐care managers.

Although often associated with the public sector, purchasing groups are also an alternative considered more and more by managers of the private sector. A purchasing group increases volume consolidation, making it possible to have only one negotiation, in order to increase the purchasing group members' power vis‐à‐vis that of its suppliers. However, a purchasing group also constitutes an additional link in the supply chain and its objectives could go contrary to those of some of its members. This is why organisations considering joining a purchasing group should analyse this option strategically, in order to assess correctly the potential long‐term benefits.

This article suggests key questions and an analytical framework to help managers assess the potential benefits and drawbacks of joining a purchase group.

Analysis of the organisational structures utilised to conduct international purchasing activities was undertaken at 24 multinational corporations. The majority of the corporations studied had decentralised purchasing organisations and all had corporate purchasing staffs. Four basic approaches were found: (1) totally decentralised; (2) co‐ordinated; (3) totally centralised; and (4) separate international purchasing group. Within this overall framework there were several forms of staff assistance to assist operating units effectively accomplish their international purchasing goals. This assistance included foreign buying offices, trading companies and international staff specialists. There was also a common philosophy which indicated the necessity of worldwide sourcing.

This study aims to analyze how startups organize their purchasing activities to improve operative excellence and become attractive customers.

The authors use a two-phase exploratory approach with semistructured interviews and a World Café. In total, 20 startup purchasers and suppliers participated. It is an international study with participants from eight countries (Belgium, Brazil, France, Germany, Hungary, The Netherlands, the UK and the USA).

The authors find that startups organize the purchasing function in five ways: partial outsourcing, transactional-oriented, strategic only, outsourced purchasing and full department. Each type has advantages and disadvantages regarding operative excellence. The authors identify type-specific antecedents to operative excellence: forecasting, payment habits, ordering process, contact accessibility and quick decision-making.

The value of this paper is that it offers entrepreneurs a framework to organize startup purchasing activities, including outsourcing options. Furthermore, it provides theoretical contributions that expand the topic of purchasing and supply organization and operative excellence to the startup context.

The value of this paper is that, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, it is the first to explore purchasing organization and operative excellence in startups.

This purpose of this paper is to understand the environmental impacts of stakeholder-driven sustainable purchasing policies in institutional settings.

The research is framed using stakeholder and life cycle assessment (LCA) theories. The study uses a multi-method approach. Starting with interviews to understand the breadth of sustainability issues and significant food purchases facing institutional purchasing managers, the authors subsequently perform LCA of these various policies using the most popular food item in different categories.

From the interview results, the authors found that food purchasers focus predominately on cost, thus, are committed to food and packaging reduction. They are driven to buy local foods based on their consumer stakeholders but share their commitment to buying local products if the cost is appropriate. In the LCA of popular food items in multiple scenarios, avoiding food waste of various forms had significantly higher carbon emissions savings than packaging reduction or transportation minimizing (buy local) strategies.

The sample relied solely on the perceptions of institutional purchasing managers in university dining services. Future research should involve collecting data from other stakeholder groups such as the customers themselves, institutional leaders, and in other types of institutional settings such as hospitals and government agencies.

The research provides managers with insights concerning the trade-offs between different sustainability objectives. In particular, findings show that reducing waste related animal protein has a bigger impact on environmental performance than many other popular sustainability objectives such as buying local or reducing packaging waste.

The paper focuses on the purchasing trade-offs of buying local vs national food products, different packaging solutions, and food waste generation. These decisions offer some social benefits (improve the economic situation for local farms vs consolidated food producers) as well as multiple environmental benefits.

The paper presents new findings on the sustainability purchasing priorities of stakeholders in institutional food settings and subsequent LCA of those policies to show which might have the most environmental impact.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how buyers and the vendors pursue alignment in collaborative purchasing (CP) of complex medical technologies.

Through a literature review in CP, the paper identify factors for shareholder alignment (i.e. aligning the needs of the buyers within the purchasing group) and customer alignment (i.e. aligning buyers’ needs with the vendors offering strategies) and investigate how they manifest in the case of CP of complex technology in the Danish National Healthcare System.

Shareholder alignment requires appropriate management of the relationships, expertise and guidance in simplifying procedures and effective management of the purchasing group. Customer alignment is facilitated by buyers’ understating of the vendor’s design options, which are moderated by the vendor’s design strategies.

The findings and generalizations from a single case study are limited to the complexity of the purchased technology and the specific cultural context. However the paper represents the first explorative study that poses the attention on the relevance of shareholder and customer alignment in CP.

The study can offer hospitals, vendors, governmental and regional institutions a better understanding about the alignment mechanisms for successful implementation of CP and how to avoid pitfalls.

Literature on CP is scarce as there are virtually no contributions that debate the key elements and tradeoffs that need to be considered for strategic alignment. The study addresses this gap.

The promulgation of group purchasing organizations (GPOs) into the healthcare (HC) sector is an invaluable procurement strategy to manage the suppliers effectively. This study aims to identify and prioritize the factors of integrating GPOs into the HC sector on the perspectives of the developing countries such as India.

The factors are identified from current literature exploration, experts’ support and experience surveys. The factors are scrutinized and shortlisted using the Delphi technique and analysed further using the best-worst model method.

The findings of the study highlight the cost reduction, fair distribution of savings and healthcare supply chain (HCSC) data standardization among others to be the most prioritized drivers. The consulting services provided by GPOs including training and development as a result of high competitiveness in the HC market has been prioritized the least.

The study bears some important implications for decision and policymakers. The managers should consider factors, namely, cost reduction, fair distribution of savings and HCSC data standardization on a priority basis that acts as motivation for the HC providers to join the GPOs.

The study provides valuable insights for HC providers to participate in the GPOs for cost savings and enhance the performances.

Current English health policy is focused on strengthening the ‘demand-side’ of the health care system. Recent reforms are designed to significantly enhance the capability and status of the organisations responsible for commissioning health care services and, in so doing, to address some of the perceived problems of a historically provider/supplierled health system. In this context, commissioning organisations are being encouraged to draw on concepts and processes derived from commercial procurement and supply chain management (SCM) as they develop their expertise. While the application of such principles in the health sector is not new, existing work in the UK has not often considered the role of health care purchasers in the management of health service supply-chains. This paper describes the status of commissioning in the NHS, briefly reviews the procurement and SCM literature and begins to explore the links between them. It lays the foundations for further work which will test the extent to which lessons can be extracted in principle from the procurement literature and applied in practice by health care commissioners.

Procurement professionals widely use purchasing portfolio models to tailor purchasing strategies to different product groups’ needs. However, the application of these approaches in hospitals and the impact of a pandemic shock remain largely unknown. This paper aims to assess hospital purchasers’ procurement strategies during the COVID-19 pandemic, the effects of factor-market rivalry (FMR) on strategies and the effectiveness of purchasing portfolio categorizations in this situation.

This qualitative study of hospital purchasing in the Netherlands is supported by secondary data from official government publications. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 13 hospital purchasers at large hospitals. An interpretative approach is used to analyze the interviews and present the results.

The findings reveal that product scarcity forces purchasers to treat them as (temporary) bottleneck items at the hospital level. The strategies adopted largely aligned with expected behavior based on Kraljic’s commodity management model. Adding the FMR perspective to the model helped to further cluster crisis strategies into meaningful categories. Besides inventory management, increasing supply, reducing demand and increasing resource coordination were the other common strategies. An important finding is that purchasers and governments serve as gatekeepers in channeling FMR, thereby reducing potential harmful competition between and within hospitals.

The devastating experience of the COVID-19 pandemic is unveiling critical weaknesses of public health-care provision in times of crisis. This study assesses the strategies hospital purchasers apply to counteract shortages in the supply chain. The findings of this study emphasize the importance of gatekeepers in times of crisis and present strategies purchasers can take to assure the supply of resources.

No research has been conducted on purchasing portfolio models and FMR implications for hospitals during pandemics. Therefore, the authors offer several insights: increasing the supply risk creates temporary bottleneck strategies, letting purchasers adopt a short-term perspective and emphasizing the high mobility of commodities in the Kraljic commodity matrix. Additionally, despite more collaboration uncovered in other studies regarding COVID-19, strong rivalry arose at the beginning of the pandemic, leading to increased competition and less collaboration. Given such increased FMR, procurement managers and governments become important gatekeepers to balance resource allocation during pandemics both within and between hospitals.

A distinction must be drawn between a dismissal on the one hand, and on the other a repudiation of a contract of employment as a result of a breach of a fundamental term of that contract. When such a repudiation has been accepted by the innocent party then a termination of employment takes place. Such termination does not constitute dismissal (see London v. James Laidlaw & Sons Ltd (1974) IRLR 136 and Gannon v. J. C. Firth (1976) IRLR 415 EAT).