A study of team orientation in global purchasing

Develops and tests a model of team orientation in the global purchasing process of a Fortune 500 multinational services organization. Based on a sample of 179 domestic and 167 international strategic business units (SBUs), the results indicate that team orientation in a purchasing unit is influenced by transformational leadership behaviors and the SBU user’s flexibility in mental models, which, in turn, affects customer orientation, relationship commitment, and cycle time in the process. The results appear to be strategically robust across the domestic and international purchasing settings, while the tactical implications of the results differ somewhat depending on the purchasing scenarios.