The shrinking professional realm of the industrial buyer - a transaction cost view on organisational and infrastructural changes in a Norwegian high-tech industrial cluster

Abstract

Based on a qualitative case study in a Norwegian industrial cluster dominated by firms manufacturing technologically highly advanced products, the research can report that several procurement managers believe their buyers are seeing their suppliers too seldom, while buyers report that their negotiations with suppliers are often hampered by design engineers who have promised the supplier the contract beforehand. A transaction cost analysis provides an explanation why, in the case of high-tech industrial procurements, design engineers are taking over parts of the buyers' responsibilities and why the buyers tend to have looser personal contact with the suppliers. Seen as an information infrastructure (II), the electronic data systems and office tools as a whole, contribute to the transformation of the buyers' responsibilities in the direction of mercantile deskwork.