Toward a measure of competitive priorities for purchasing

The purpose of this paper is to develop a set of measures of purchasing's c ompetitive priorities. We maintain that purchasing is a strategic contribut or to the firm, and that the selection and retention of external suppliers is a fundamental and strategic purchasing task that manifests the function' s competitive priorities. Researchers and managers increasingly view the op erations and purchasing functions as intimately linked, and as playing impo rtant roles in supply chain management. Ultimately, the performance of the operations management system, measured in terms of quality, cost, delivery and flexibility, depends on inputs secured by the purchasing function from the firm's suppliers. However, in a search for substantive relationships, t he purchasing Literature has largely overlooked methodological issues such as measurement. Using empirical data collected from North American purchasi ng executives, a confirmatory factor analysis provides evidence that purcha sing's competitive priorities may be conceptualized similarly to the compet itive priorities in operations, with key differences. The measures satisfy key measurement criteria including unidimensionality, convergent validity, discriminant validity, and reliability. Five competitive priorities form th e basis of a multidimensional measure of purchasing's competitive prioritie s, the individual factors of which will allow for the examination of linkag es between purchasing, operations and other parts of the supply chain. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.