How to create effective sourcing teams?
To deal with today’s high demands on purchasing, sourcing teams have become an increasingly popular form of organization. Sourcing teams have been installed widely with high expectations. Success, however, is not guaranteed. Is your company reaping the full benefits of driving sourcing teams? And how should sourcing teams be managed to live up to, or exceed targets? Herewith we would like to offer you an excellent opportunity to gain highly relevant insights in this area by becoming a partner in our research project. In this research project, the critical success factors for sourcing teams will be addressed. By a sound academic research approach, we aim to derive a set of practical managerial implications. Our research set-up allows for conducting benchmark studies for the participating companies as well as analyzing potential progress on learning curves by these companies.
Introduction
Strategic sourcing has been at the forefront of company thinking over the last years and substantial research has examined the issues that are related to purchasing strategy and decisions. The role of purchasing has become of strategic importance to companies, and in effect the need for flexibility, reduced lead times and cross-functional communication has increased. However, research on how to organize for effective purchasing is scarce.
To deal with the increased requirements that purchasing faces, scholars have advocated the use of sourcing teams to achieve superior purchasing performance. Teams have become a popular form of organization to develop and execute a sourcing strategy. The use of team structures in purchasing organizations seems to correlate with positive performance outcomes, but success is not guaranteed. As a result, successful management of sourcing teams has become a key lever for success.
Team performance has been a major topic in academic research for a long time. Previous research in this field focused mainly on manufacturing teams, new product development teams, service teams and decision making teams. These studies have shown that studying different types of teams leads to different results. Sourcing teams can be defined by a typical set of task- and context characteristics, and practice has learned that these teams run into specific obstacles for success. As a result, implications from team research with other types of teams under study do not cover the typical issues that sourcing teams face sufficiently. While it is acknowledged that the creation of successful sourcing teams is difficult, only a few empirical research projects have these teams as the prime subject of study.
This study introduces rigorous team research in the field of purchasing and focuses on the effectiveness of sourcing teams as a strategic management tool. The overall objective is to identify critical success factors for sourcing teams. The shared feature of the teams under study is that they are responsible for the strategic part of the purchasing process, commonly referred to as sourcing.
This project is led by Prof. dr. A.J. van Weele (NEVI chair holder of Purchasing and Supply Management at Eindhoven University of Technology) and is executed in close collaboration with the human performance management department at Eindhoven University of Technology. The executive researcher is B.A. Driedonks MSc.
Participation
This study has been initiated early 2008. The research executed so far included a large-scale cross-sectional survey study. This study covered 12 multinational companies and 60 teams. This research has provided better insight in how specific dimensions of sourcing team effectiveness can be enhanced. Moreover, the results allowed for conducting a benchmark study for each participating company. The results of this study have proved to be an excellent point of departure in roundtable meetings and workshops with the companies involved. Our intention is to repeat these studies over time, to be able to support companies in evaluating progress.
For participation, companies must provide contact details per sourcing team of team members, team leaders and managers. These members, leaders and managers will receive an e-mail invitation that provides access to a web-based questionnaire. Filling out this questionnaire takes approximately 20 minutes for members and leaders, and 5 minutes for managers.It should be emphasized here that this research will only address organizational matters and will not include category specific information or other sensitive business information. Results will be reported anonymously.
Apart from this survey study, companies have the possibility to participate in qualitative research. In such research, we will study and analyze team effectiveness within the respective company in depth by conducting interviews, observing team processes and other methods. How such research is designed and conducted will be determined in close collaboration with each participating company. Participation in this qualitative part of the study can provide a more accurate interpretation of the survey results, and might reveal areas for significant improvements.
Contact
For more information regarding this research project, please contact:
Boudewijn Driedonks MSc
Eindhoven University of Technology
P.O. Box 513, 5600 MB EINDHOVEN
The Netherlands
Tel: +31-40-2472474 (if no answer +31-40-2472170)
Mobile: +31-6-15240745
