Work-Flow Frictions, Interfunctional Rivalry, and Professionalism: A Case Study of Purchasing Agents

The large corporation has been traditionally viewed as a unified organization of employees working together in close coordination toward a common objective. An alternative conception is that of the corporation as a mass of competing power groups, each seeking to influence company policy in terms of its own interests, or, at least, in terms of its own distorted image of the company's interest.1 This article uses the Purchasing Agent as a case example to illustrate the forms which rivalry among functional groups can take, and to show how this rivalry, among other factors, encourages PAS (as they are commonly known) to seek to become