Yes! Purchasing can create and capture value. A study of purchasing capabilities and impact on Business Performance

This paper makes two contributions. First, building on ambidexterity literature, we investigate how purchasing functions can simultaneously explore and exploit opportunities, facilitating innovation while maintaining efficiency. This led us to define three purchasing capabilities: gathering unmet needs, exploring opportunities in the supply ecosystem, and tapping suppliers’ potential for innovation. Second, we tested for the existence of such capabilities and their impact on a company’s financial and commercial performance by means of a survey approach. Our analysis provides evidence of an emergent taxonomy of purchasing functions based on patterns of capabilities. Also, we tested the impact such capabilities have on a companies’ business performance.