Proceedings of ICLT 2016
CENTRALIZED PURCHASING OF MANAGEMENT CONSULTING SERVICES: BEYOND INVOLVEMENT, TOWARDS OUTSOURCING
Andreas Norrman; Susan Dam; Caroline Bennet
Department of Industrial Management and Logistics, Lund University, Faculty of Engineering, Sweden; Department of Industrial Management and Logistics, Lund University, Faculty of Engineering, Sweden; Department of Industrial Management and Logistics, Lund University, Faculty of Engineering, Sweden
International Conference on Logistics & Transport 2016, Singapore, pp. 18-27
Paper overview
Purchasing of management consulting services is a challenging and complex task (Mitchell, 1994; Smelzer and Ogden, 2002; Werr and Pemer, 2007; Pemer et al., 2014) that has received increasing attention in research and practice. As other professional services they are abstract, built on intangible qualities and dependent on the buyer-supplier interaction which make them difficult to specify, compare and evaluate. But management consulting services (MCS) normally have high strategic stakes, including high prices for the services and giving advice concerning critical situations (Mitchell, 1994). Siewke et al (2012) find two main approaches for purchasing MCS: a decentralized where the functional high-level manager decides whether to use consultancies, which, and how much to spend; and a more centralized where e.g. the purchasing department is more involved in selection and contract negotiation phases. Werr and Pemer (2007) add a hybrid approach with some stages in the purchasing approach centralized while other still run by the functional manager.
Keywords
logistics; supply chain; ICLT 2016
Citation
Andreas Norrman; Susan Dam; Caroline Bennet (2016). CENTRALIZED PURCHASING OF MANAGEMENT CONSULTING SERVICES: BEYOND INVOLVEMENT, TOWARDS OUTSOURCING. Proceedings of the International Conference on Logistics & Transport (ICLT 2016), Singapore, pp. 18-27.