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Discusses supply chain management practices, with emphasis on purchasing, in Botswana (a developing country). Focuses on problems facing business operations and how to improve the situation. Presents the views of purchasing personnel from public and private organizations and of students taking purchasing and supply chain management courses. Discovers that purchasing has not been recognized as a profession, which has led to lack of motivation in purchasing sections’ personnel. Further, purchasing policies on external relationships and image are non‐existent in most organizations. Claims that managers need to change their thinking about the purchasing and supply function – to see it as strategic and not clerical; and purchasing and supplies personnel require training in supply chain management.

In this chapter, we try to put ourselves in the buyer’s situation. It is a strong ongoing change force among contemporary organizations. Purchasing organizations are getting more capable, better equipped with tools, methods, higher skilled people, and improved organizational designs. This means that the business landscape for sales has changed significantly.

In this chapter, we describe this development and what it means for the ways in which purchasing organizations manage their business and also what are the implications for sales organizations. Our message is that these developments are important to be aware of for people in sales as well as for the entire sales organization and sales managers.

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 paper analyzes how German municipalities organize their purchasing activities. It aims to identify patterns in the structure of the purchasing function and to study how the size of the municipality influences the design of its purchasing organization. Therefore, an analytical framework based on contingency and organization theory is developed and results of an empirical study are presented. The results indicate that German municipalities use a medium level of centralization and specialization in organizing their purchasing activities, but that the purchasing process is highly formalized and represented on high hierarchical levels in many cases. As to the relationship between the size of a municipality and the structure of its purchasing function, the study indicates that size, measured by the number of inhabitants, the number of employees and purchasing volume influences the structural variables in various ways.

The purpose of the paper is to explore the factors that drive or hinder organisations to implement socially responsible purchasing.

A literature analysis is complemented with empirical data from interviews with 20 private and public Swedish organisations.

The findings from the literature analysis are compared with findings from Swedish organisations. The study finds that in Swedish organisations, the main drivers for socially responsible purchasing include stakeholder influence and organisational values, media and NGOs' attention and employees' concern. The main barriers are a lack of resources for supplier audits, difficulties to ensure that all suppliers fulfil the code of conduct, differences in culture and management style, low levels of social standards and high levels of corruption in some countries of supply, all of which makes assurance practices a very costly enterprise.

Future research could compare socially responsible purchasing (SRP) practices of focal organisations from different countries and deepen the understanding of contextual factors that shape responses of suppliers situated in different regions.

Although exploratory in nature, this study assists managers and public procurers with a greater understanding of the drivers and barriers of socially responsible purchasing, as well as of success factors for integrating social aspects into purchasing practices.

The paper contributes to the limited body of literature on the drivers and barriers for organisations to initiate and maintain the work on socially responsible purchasing.

The impact of strategic procurement is driven by the contribution of the function to overall corporate performance and its interface relationships. The actual impact on corporate performance in the UK further and higher education sectors has been neither empirically substantiated nor rigorously examined. This research was carried out in UK fiscal year 1998/1999 with 60 UK further education (FE) and 40 UK higher education (HE) institutions participating. This paper provides empirical evidence that progress has been achieved in strategic procurement in FE and HE and suggests areas for continuous improvement.

This research focuses on a comparison of public and private sector supply organizations in terms of organizational structure, supply chain responsibilities, the chief purchasing officer (CPO) and reporting line, teaming and involvement in major organizational activities. A unique opportunity to identify similarities and differences was presented in 2000 when the National Institute of Governmental Purchasing Research (NIGP) and Florida Atlantic University replicated in the public sector a study that the Center for Advanced Purchasing Studies (CAPS) conducted in the private sector in 1995. Significant differences and similarities are identified and are discussed in this paper.

Reducing purchasing costs remains an ongoing concern for most organizations. The standard purchasing process that works well for large purchases, however, generates proportionately much higher overhead and administrative costs for small purchases leading to purchase delays, high error rate, and poor vendor participation. There is a need to develop separate purchasing processes for small and large purchases and evaluate underlying factors that affect such process transformation. This paper aims to analyze a successful purchasing process transformation conducted at a utility company for small purchases.

It uses a case study methodology to examine the transformation in detail and understand related issues such as benefits realization, resistance to change, and risk management involved in such transformation projects.

It compares original and transformed purchasing processes and identifies resultant benefits to the company, participating vendors, banks, and employees. It finds that a company receives many operational, informational, and accounting benefits in addition to purchasing cost savings.

It provides guidelines for similar restructuring for small purchases in other organizations.

The paper offers a generic business process model for small purchases and employs equity‐implementation model to explain the factors leading to the success in this purchasing process transformation and possibly other similar organizational transformations.

The recent attention to purchasing decisions in a variety of commercial and government contexts has grown much faster than detailed understanding of how sourcing decisions are made and their implications for organisations. This paper provides an overview of empirical research into sourcing decisions made in UK and Swiss organisations and will be of international interest to practitioners and academics in both purchasing and marketing. The research demonstrates in both countries that sourcing decisions are highly contingent situations and the variable is policy.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the most important factors for strategic purchasing of health services in the health sector by the Iran Health Insurance Company and to provide an applicable model for other similar organizations in developing countries.

The present qualitative study was conducted in 2017 to identify the factors affecting the implementation of strategic purchasing of health services in the health sector by the Iran Health Insurance Company and to provide an indigenous and practical model through two phases: semi-structured interview followed by a Delphi process.

According to the findings of this study, Ministry of Welfare, Labor and Social Security plays a central role in the strategic purchasing. In addition, this was also approved by the representatives of citizens in communities concerning professional associations, insurance agencies and representative of the Council of Ministers. Model development explored 9 themes and 54 sub-themes.

Based on the model, most attention has been paid to consumer role and inter-sector leadership of the company with other relevant organizations and systems including other insurance organizations and the welfare ministry. More importantly, the health insurance company should be able to communicate with providers and to choose the best providers, receiving price information through competition in the most appropriate mechanism. Guided by this model, it can strategically buy the best and the most effective services for its insured population.

It might help developing societies to promote their health systems based on targeting the health budgeting and financial constraints so that it is prioritized according to the strategic purchasing criteria and consequently, economic evaluation.

The linchpins of the present study are as follow: first, the pragmatic model presented in the paper could help developing health systems to overcome the impediment in the implementation progress of strategic purchasing. Second, the model satisfies the need of enough knowledge to apply strategic purchasing in the health system. Third, the indigents have long been given special protection and consideration in the model that has continued to capture the attention of every policy-maker, in particular, developing countries, the portion of which is significant. Fourth, based on this model, attention has been paid to consumer role and inter-sector leadership of organization with other relevant organizations and systems. Fifth, this model could be correspondent for every insurance company in countries with similar developing conditions.