Driving and enabling factors for purchasing involvement in product development

Abstract

This article is the second in a series of two focusing on the involvement of suppliers and, more specifically, the purchasing function in product development. The first article introduced a framework defining purchasing involvement in product development in terms of a series of specific activities across four different management areas. This second article extends the framework into a basic contingency model by identifying driving and enabling factors that influence the need for and the ability of firms to carry out the various activities from our framework. In that way, it provides indications in which situations certain activities are more important than others and suggestions as to how to enable an organisation to perform purchasing involvement in product development in an effective and efficient way.