Creating Corporate Advantage through Purchasing: Toward a Contingency Model

SUMMARY This study was undertaken to address the need for empirical research for improving and sustaining corporate advantage through purchasing. This article explains how large corporations may effectively manage purchasing synergies among individual business units. It will become clear that in doing so, corporate purchasing officers (CPOs) need to tailor their approach depending on three constructs, i.e., purchasing maturity, corporate coherence, and business context. Based upon these constructs, they may select five different coordinating mechanisms to foster purchasing synergies within their corporation.