Abstract
25 years ago in the UK David Farmer began a long, lone struggle to raise the strategic profile of the purchasing function. iNo significant new theoretical or practical contributions to Farmer’s work appeared until the 1990s when, following the improved academic standing of the study of Purchasing, a number of authors began to examine the link with strategic issues.ii Around the same time a number of papers which seemed to be relevant to Purchasing because of their focus on the practice of “strategic sub-contracting”, appeared in the general strategy literature. However, it will be argued that this apparent relevance was illusory. Moreover, no work was done to tackle an extremely serious theoretical threat to the significance of Purchasing that was raised, in passing, in work on the resource-based perspective on the theory of the firm. The primary objective of this chapter is to examine the nature and severity of that threat.
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Ramsay, J. (2002). Can Purchasing Have a Strategic Role in the Modern Firm?. In: Hahn, D., Kaufmann, L. (eds) Handbuch Industrielles Beschaffungsmanagement. Gabler Verlag, Wiesbaden. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-663-01582-6_6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-663-01582-6_6
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