Strategic Purchasing – On our way to sustainability

There is a growing awareness of Purchasing and Supply Preface Management contribution to a company’s competitive advantage. Over the past decades, the field of Purchasing has fundamentally evolved from a narrowly defined business activity into an area of increasing interest and strategic importance, for industries and academia. Consequently, the demand for highly educated and skilled managers with Purchasing knowledge has been growing also.

In line with the developments of the field of Purchasing, we have decided to approach Master Course Purchasing in a new way for the second time in a row. Differently to ‘regular’ lectures and tutorials, students were challenged to plan and execute a book writing project engaging them in active learning by doing.

We proudly present the resulting E-book of this project – Sustainable Strategic Purchasing – written by 23 international students in Management Science between February and April 2014. Based on literature reviews as well as case studies and examples the students have worked on different themes with the joint ambition to describe and discuss the state of the art of Purchasing today. While the book focuses on the developments in sustainable strategic Purchasing and Supply Management it might also provide a presentation of a coming generation of purchasing professionals.

The course and the book could not have been realized without the support of the companies and people who kindly contributed their time for guest lectures and further information: Sander Koopmans (Adjust), Ad Weterings (Gasunie Groningen), Michiel Aarts (Unilever), Hans Wortmann (University of Groningen) and Hans Bax (UMCG).

Finally, we would like to thank all students involved. Your enthusiasm, curiosity, eagerness, cooperation and perseverance made it possible to carry out this book project (and in only 7 weeks)!

Groningen, April 2014,

Dr. Kirstin Scholten and Drs. Ing. Henk Faber

Department of Operations, Faculty of Economics and Business

to read the book, please download it here: PDF