Supplier Selection Practices among Small Firms in the United States: Testing Three Models

Abstract

One of the issues investigated in recent studies on small business enterprises involves the role of supply chain management. Supply chain management has become an important part of strategic planning in both large and small businesses in the 1990s as firms increasingly choose outsourcingas an externally-driven strategic growth path. This study examines the supplier selection practices among 78 small business executives in the midwest United States by testing three models: rational/normative, external control, and strategic choice. Although the results show support for all three models, the rational/normative model emerges as the most significant model for predicting the supplier selection practices of small firms.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 111 citations exist upstream.