The linking pin role in organizational buying centers

Abstract

The buying center concept has been widely accepted in the organizational buying behavior literature. Nevertheless, the application of the concept in empirical investigations has been limited in scope. Most research has examined either the composition of the buying center or the influence processes operating within it. The intraorganizational dynamics (among members of the buying center) and the interorganizational dynamics (between buying center members and outside organizations) have been ignored in buying center research. Common to these two sets of relationships is the presence of a “linking pin” or “boundary role” person. The purposes of this paper are twofold. The first is to suggest the concept of the “linking pin” role in a buying center and to highlight the conceptual importance of this role in furthering the understanding and prediction of organizational buying processes and outcomes. Explication of this role should also lead to an enriched conceptualization of the relationships between the buying and selling organizations. The second objective is to report on the results of some initial empirical investigations into the role of a designated linking pin in hospital buying centers. These results offer preliminary evidence of the value of the linking pin concept.