It has always been a ‘mystery’, why the Danish building industry stagnated after the industrial breakthrough, and never was able to adapt the industrial production, business culture, buyer perception, and leadership and management, used in nearly all other Danish industries. This study offers a new approach to understanding the problem - by analysing systemic barriers to the industry’s transformation to a seller driven industry, in the context of a widespread neglect of the need for industrialisation (a problem addressed by relatively little literature) with the building remaining a manual, craft based industry, based on the old building process and its associated business model. Industrialisation has instead taken place in the building materials industry, which in a Danish context is a separate and highly industrialised industry. To analyse the barriers for transformation in the building industry a multidimensional approach is applied: First the building industry and modern industries are compared. Two archetype models are created using the above mentioned variables; one model for the building industry and its “Buyer Controlled Procurement Model” and one for modern industries and their “Seller Driven Marketing Model” with interrelated production and sale, enabling them to sell to unknown customers. Next the statistical productivity trends and other secondary data are examined to analyse, if the Seller Driven Marketing Model is performing better. Finally a Delphi Panel Consultation is conducted to discuss future development scenarios. Michel Foucault’s principles of historical analysis and his ‘episteme’ concept are used to analyse the outcome of the Delphi Panel Consultation.

Many multinational corporations find themselves frequently in the dichotomous question of whether to make or buy a given component; but when those companies are operating with a global purchasing strategy, oriented to high levels of centralization and dealing simultaneously with the implications of purchasing and producing the same item, the approach to take the decision becomes difficult to find, even with the current literature and practitioners knowledge This master thesis addresses in a comprehensive proposal the way to undertake this kind of make-or-buy decisions. Through the literature review done, regarding global purchasing strategy, purchasing models, supplier selection methods and make-or-buy frameworks; it was found a convenient model to merge those concepts with the empirical experiences of a single case study in the Italcementi Group, one of the largest Cement producers in the world. The model proposed considers both strategic and economic elements and is designed as an iterative algorithm that evaluates several alternatives in order to arrive to the best make-or-buy approach. The methodologies selected and combined to solve the problem are mostly quantitative, but keeping the importance of qualitative elements within the analysis. The outcome of the thesis is a contribution to academicians and practitioners aiming to turn the existing knowledge about make-or-buy decisions into practical solutions for business management.