Organising purchasing and (strategic) sourcing: towards a typological theory

The role of purchasing has changed over the past two to three decades. The focus is no longer limited to purchasing manufacturing inputs, but also includes sourcing of innovations from, and even co-developing technologies together with, suppliers. Furthermore, purchasing has obtained a much more mature role in corporate strategy. These changes have serious implications for the purchasing process, its characteristics and organisation. Previous research indicates that none of the prevailing solutions, functional departments and cross-functional teams, embedded in a centralised, decentralised or hybrid overall structure, deliver the expected results. Contingency theory predicts that the success of a firm depends on the fit among characteristics of, amongst others, the firm's processes and organisational structure. The objective of this paper is to propose and illustrate a process-based typological theory of purchasing and (strategic) sourcing organisation.