Organizational Commitment in Purchasing and Supply Chain Management - Building an Evaluation Instrument

The concept of organizational commitment has been studied extensively during the past decades, and remains one of the most challenging and studied concepts in organizational research. In purchasing as well as in supply chain management, commitment plays a very central role, because the personnel work directly with outside organizations as well as being part of complicated supply chain networks, and therefore are in a position to develop commitment towards outside organizations. This paper discusses the importance of organizational commitment in supply chain management and in the purchasing function. In addition, the principles of our newly developed Internet-based evaluation instrument are highlighted. This application has been preliminarily tested and the verification and validation processes are still under evaluation.