With a little help from your friends (and neighbors): A potentially faster way to accumulate knowledge in the field of purchasing and supply

Abstract

Introduction Purchasing and supply management is a relatively young twig on the tree of management science. There are excellent empirical studies that explore key issues in this subdiscipline, that are well designed and executed, and have far-reaching conclusions for the research community and/ or practitioners. One excellent study that springs to mind is that of Paul Joskow, first published in 1987 in the American Economic Review and reprinted in 1996 in Scott Masten’s book ‘‘Case Studies in Contracting and Organization’’. Joskow’s study empirically tests the importance of relationship-specific investments in determining the duration of coal supply contracts. The important question at stake in this study is about the governance of relations between buyers and suppliers.Moreover, the study is based on a well-defined general theory from which the core hypothesis is derived; the ‘case’ (purchase and supply of coal) is well argued, and a sample of coal contracts provides an excellent opportunity for testing the core hypothesis. This is a study in which qualitative and quantitative methods come together. Masten’s book offers yet more interesting examples of such hybrid studies, such as Thomas Palay’s study on the governance of rail freight contracting (Palay, 1984/1996), and Victor Goldberg and John Erickson’s case study of long-term petroleum coke contracts (Goldberg and Erickson, 1987/1996). In the introduction to their contribution to this JPSM special issue on research methods, for one reason or the other Anna Dubois and Luis Araujo state that they do not wish to conclude with a plea for such hybrid or mixed studies. I was amazed by that point of view. In my opinion such studies offer an excellent opportunity for accelerated growth of knowledge in purchasing and supply management research, and we should emphasize that as often as we can. [...]