Behavioral challenges to cross-functional teams in purchasing and supply management

Abstract

This dissertation emphasizes that the common cross-functionality of sourcing decisions in practice requires researchers to take more account of the behavioral team-level influences on organizational buying. Specifically, the thesis focusses the internal conflicts and politics in teams. First, it establishes a link between the formerly separated concepts of conflict and politics via a general management literature review. Second, it provides a tangible research agenda for the under-represented team-level politics in Purchasing and Supply Management (PSM). Third, it adds empirical evidence on the link between conflict and politics in the specialized context of cross-functional sourcing teams. Fourth, the thesis makes an advance into the scarcely researched PSM team politics field by focusing on the question how goal misalignment and the distribution of knowledge across cross-functional actors jointly affect team performance. In summary, the thesis emphasizes that the team-level can offer a highly credible perspectives on strategic PSM choices and that research on behavioral impediments to cross-functional integration, such as conflict or politics, still holds immense potentials.