Practitioners operating within the construction industry are faced with considerable challenges and difficulties when attempting to manage their supply chains and obtain value for money. This work highlighted that in response to these problems, recent industry reports and academic literature have called for the adoption of more sophisticated 'best practice' approaches including proactive integrated supply chain management to provide significant commercial benefits and alter construction's supposed obsolete practices. This advice has been contested by a number of academic writers, who are more sceptical about whether generic approaches can be claimed to be 'best practice', without providing a convincing and robust methodological justification. In response to this ongoing debate, and following the power and appropriateness school of thought, this thesis developed testable hypotheses regarding the ability of construction clients and contractors to implement specific sourcing approaches under particular external power circumstances, and the impact that internal capabilities has on the ability of buyers to effectively implement proactive or reactive sourcing approaches. In testing the hypotheses, it has been demonstrated that the implementation of proactive approaches to upstream supply management are not appropriate (or possible) in all supply chain circumstances and power structures and therefore, reactive sourcing approaches may be the most effective supply strategy for some buyers, or indeed their only option.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:594254 |
| Date | January 2005 |
| Creators | Ireland, Paul Nicholas |
| Publisher | University of Birmingham |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
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