Efficiency motives and institutional considerations in make-or-buy decisions.

摘要

This thesis investigates the following research questions: What drives the choice of different alternatives in organizational purchasing decisions? Is the choice driven solely by consideration of economic factors, solely by consideration of social factors, or do economic and social factors both play a role in the outcome? This thesis attempts to answer these questions by investigating such decisions from the two different theoretical perspectives associated with the institutional and efficiency explanations.; This thesis investigates the institutionalization of relationship marketing and its impact on organizational purchasing decisions. The particular organizational purchasing decision considered is that of make-or-buy decisions for components that impact end-user purchases. Relationship marketing is considered by many to be the dominant approach to marketing. However, while academics agree that partnering is the cornerstone of relationship marketing, consensus among practitioners has yet to emerge regarding the specific implementation of this paradigm.; This dissertation employs institutional theory to investigate relationship marketing as both an orientation and as a practice. Institutional theory examines the adoption of organized, established procedures or standardized interaction sequences (i.e., institutions), which provide stability and meaning to social behavior. A new measure that captures how practitioners define relationship marketing is developed to test the proposed model of institutional effects. The new measure is also used to compare the stage at which relationship marketing is located in the institutionalization process.; In addition to the proposed institutional effects model, this thesis also proposes a testable model of the efficiency paradigm and an integrated model of both to compare the ability of each to explain these decisions. The integrated model considers complementary aspects operating in organizational decision making. Therefore, the integrated model is expected to yield a more comprehensive explanation than either of the theory-specific models. All three models were tested using data collected from a sample of business professionals involved in make-or-buy decisions via a survey developed for this research. The results of the data analysis support the institutional model.