Journal of Purchasing and Supply Management 26 (2020) 100608

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Journal of Purchasing and Supply Management

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/pursup

Understanding politics in PSM teams: A cross-disciplinary review and future T

research agenda
Henrik Frankea, Kai Foerstlb,∗
a
Production & Operations Management, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH), Zurich, Switzerland
b
Supply Chain Management & Logistics, German Graduate School of Management & Law (GGS), Heilbronn, Germany

A R T I C LE I N FO A B S T R A C T

Keywords: Purchasing and Supply Management (PSM) decisions, such as make-or-buy or vendor selections, are highly
Team politics dependent on the cooperation of several functions in decision-making teams in order to make more holistic and
Cross-functional teams effective decisions. However, members of cross-functional PSM teams often also pursue diverse goals rooted in
Internal integration functional incentive structures that may lead to misalignment and competition. One of the resulting problems
Organizational politics
are so-called “organizational politics”, being self-serving influence attempts among functional representatives.
Systematic literature review
Examples can be nondisclosure of information, coalitions, or lobbying to protect unidimensional functional
interests that potentially obstruct effective PSM decision making. So far, PSM scholars have made exploratory
and inductive inquiries in team politics while the larger body of research on politics exists outside the PSM
scope. Thus, as PSM scholarship transcends toward deductive theory testing designs on team politics, the fields is
at risk taking isolated perspectives and failing to deduce from the extant disaggregated “general management”
literature on politics. In response to this emerging trend, we review 91 contributions to the organizational
literature on politics at the individual, team or group, and dyadic (individual-individual) level to build a future
research framework on politics in real-world cross-functional PSM decision-making teams. To do so, we dis-
tinguish thematic areas of interest and derive future avenues for research in light of ongoing PSM debates on
human resource management in PSM, leadership in PSM teams, and top management support of PSM.
Furthermore, we derive epistemological, instrumental, and theoretical guidance on how to approach politics in
cross-functional PSM teams.

1. Introduction
Decisions regarding firms' Purchasing and Supply Management
(PSM), such as global sourcing or plant location decisions, have become
increasingly complex and strategically important to modern firm's
success (Barney, 2012; Driedonks et al., 2010). Thus, firms tend to join
several functional areas, such as the purchasing, logistics, R&D, pro-
duction, and marketing function, and their diverse knowledge and ex-
pertise in internal integration processes when tackling multi-dimen-
sional PSM questions (e.g., Mentzer et al., 2008). Such integration
processes are usually carried out in cross-functional decision making
teams that seek to optimize PSM decision outcomes (Trent and
Monczka, 1994). Swink and Schoenherr (2015) even explicitly call in-
ternal integration the “extent to which intra-firm functional teams
(operations, logistics, sales, marketing, supply management) work to-
gether to accomplish supply chain planning and execution” (p. 84) and
operationalize it at the team level. While the motives of cross-functional
integration in teams are clear and well researched (e.g., Frohlich and
Westbrook, 2001; Schoenherr and Swink, 2012), obtaining truly ef-
fective integration and coordination at the PSM team-level is obstructed
by several problems in practice (Moses and Åhlström, 2008). Under-
standing internal integration as a dominantly team-oriented and thus
behavioral process opens new challenges to PSM scholars. Particularly,
early case studies show that self-serving incentives and the protection of
nested functional interests and misaligned functional goals cause poli-
tical game playing, which negatively affect analytical scrutiny and
performance of PSM decisions (Franke and Foerstl, 2019; Marshall
et al., 2015; Stanczyk et al., 2015). Reported examples speak of func-
tional managers selectively disclosing information, manipulating re-
quirements, or creating facts by working ahead to serve nested func-
tional interests in cross-functional sourcing teams (Moses and Åhlström,
2008; Stanczyk et al., 2015).
Although original PSM frameworks on Organizational Buying
Behavior (OBB) include the notion of politicking or back-stabbing in

∗
Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: hfranke@ethz.ch (H. Franke), kai.foerstl@ggs.de (K. Foerstl).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pursup.2020.100608
Received 18 October 2018; Received in revised form 10 January 2020; Accepted 5 February 2020
Available online 09 February 2020
1478-4092/ © 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
H. Franke and K. Foerstl
integrated buying centers (Sheth, 1973; Webster and Wind, 1972),
empirical PSM research has yet to embrace the particular inter-personal
challenges that so-called organizational politics (as opposed to federal
politics) can pose to PSM decision-making. In concordance with our
own assessment of the emerging behavioral literature, there is little
research on politics in groups or teams in PSM and studies tend to
neglect the inner social structures of organizations (Schorsch et al.,
2017). Consequently, scholars conclude that “impacts of political en-
vironments […] on [PSM/SCM] remain empirically untested and
poorly understood” (Thornton et al., 2016, p. 44). Hence, most em-
pirical PSM literature has, thus far, assumed that PSM team members
act rationally as a group, serving solely their firm's best interests. Such
an assumption seems questionable at best in the light of findings from
recent behavioral PSM team research (Kaufmann et al., 2014).
The foreign origin of politics concepts introduces another dimension
of complexity to the recently emerging PSM team politics research. The
existing stream of organizational politics research does not originate
from the PSM field but goes back to earlier studies conceptualizing
politics as resource acquiring tactics and describing it as common to
business life (Mintzberg, 1985; Pfeffer and Salancik, 1974). While the
recently sparked research on politics in team-based purchasing has
derived interesting inductive insight (e.g. Stanczyk et al., 2015), the
PSM field is partly at risk failing to account for the diversity and mere
quantity of knowledge on politics as PSM scholars build deductive
theory on earlier advances. These advances are primarily published in
general management1 literature and are therefore somewhat hard to
oversee for PSM scholars that are deeply grounded in their own dis-
cipline. In response to this research potential, we analyze 91 con-
tributions and relate them back to the PSM context and the so far
published studies on political PSM teams. Our research questions are:
(1) What is the state of research on organizational politics in the PSM
domain and general management literature, respectively? (2) What can
be possible extensions to PSM's understanding of team politics and how
can they be researched effectively?
Our study shall pay tribute to the emerging literature on politics in
PSM teams and allow us to develop PSM-grounded theory on politics
based on a complete digestion of the rich organizational politics lit-
erature. Following the guidelines for systematic literature analysis
(Denyer and Tranfield, 2009; Durach et al., 2017), we provide a com-
prehensive forward-facing look across relevant topics surrounding in-
dividual, dyadic, and team level politics in the general management
literature. Thereby, we elaborate established findings and theory in the
PSM context and construct a comprehensive model for future research.
In particular, this study motivates why PSM, as a department-spanning
field of research and practice, is especially affected by politics in teams’
internal integration processes, advises PSM scholarship on how to ap-
proach team politics epistemologically and instrumentally, and suggests
what theories future PSM team politics studies may apply in their en-
deavors. Beyond this conceptual and instrumental guidance, our study
also makes tangible future research questions (FRQ) for future inquiry
in PSM based on themes that have been dominant in politics research.
With our work, we want to encourage the building of middle-range
theory on political teams in purchasing environments as described in
Garver (2019). Thereby, our approach is not seeking to open a niche of
PSM team politics research but emphasizes the potentials the topic
holds for cross-disciplinary research as recently emphasized in Wynstra
et al. (2019).
With this study, we contribute to answering the “call for SCM re-
searchers to devote greater effort on exploring the roles of individual
actors and groups in decision-making” (pp. 207–208) and explicitly
1
Organizational politics is discussed in various outlets of various origins, for
instance organizational research, occupational psychology, organizational be-
havior and strategic management. Research published in these domains is
subsumed under the term ‘general management’ literature.
2
Journal of Purchasing and Supply Management 26 (2020) 100608
consider the “human factor” of PSM, which is the most underestimated
theme according to a recent poll of PSM scholars (Wieland et al., 2016).
Thereby, we contribute to the emerging literature on politics in PSM
teams and the larger discussion on behavioral problems in internal in-
tegration for PSM and operational research (Gino and Pisano, 2008;
Schorsch et al., 2017) while taking a behavioral process perspective on
strategic decisions as called for by Silver (2004). Finally, with this
study, we enhance process models of Organizational Buying Behavior
(OBB) that have originally included “politicking” and influencing be-
havior (Sheth, 1973; Webster and Wind, 1972) with insights from ad-
jacent disciplines enabling future studies to fill the empirical void
surrounding political cross-functional PSM teams today.
The structure of this article is as follows. First, we present central
concepts of organizational politics. Next, we derive our research gap
based on the nascent PSM literature on politics in teams and introduce
how our work relates to the OBB tradition in purchasing research.
Further, we describe our methods of data collection, coding, and ana-
lysis before presenting the results of our research. Subsequently, we
elaborate our results in a future research framework that is based on the
Structure-Conduct-Performance paradigm (Caves, 1992), which we
adapted to the context of integration as in earlier supply chain research
(Ralston et al., 2015). We channel the discussion of the most PSM-re-
levant findings into future research recommendations and end the study
with its managerial implications, a brief summary, and the study's
limitations.
2. Definition of terms and conceptual background
Organizational politics research goes back to organizational studies
of the last century, such as Pfeffer and Salancik (1974) and Mintzberg
(1985), that view politics as inevitable part of organizational life. Pol-
itics research takes two perspectives today. The first and more promi-
nent goes back to Ferris et al. (1989) and Ferris and Kacmar (1992) who
define perceptions of organizational politics (POPs) as “the factors that
contribute to employees perceiving a work environment as political in
nature” (Ferris and Kacmar, 1992, p. 93). This broad and perceptual
view builds on perception of political events, which may differ among
individuals; for instance the “winner” and “loser” of a political incident.
POPs have occupied much of the literature, while comparably few
studies observe politics directly (e.g., DuBrin, 1989; Hochwarter et al.,
2007; Treadway et al., 2005c). The latter direct perspective observes
political behavior, which can be defined as “intentional acts of influence
to enhance or protect the self-interest of individuals or groups” (Allen
et al., 1979, p. 77). Political behavior shows in several tactics such as
coalition formation, control of agendas, and strategic use of information
(Walter et al., 2008) as well as ingratiation, self-promotion, and appeals
towards co-workers or supervisors (Harrell-Cook et al., 1999; Kipnis
et al., 1980). The co-existence of the alternative approaches to politics
has triggered ongoing discussion. Several studies have related POPs and
political behavior (e.g., Harrell-Cook et al., 1999; Sun and Chen, 2017;
Valle and Perrewe, 2000) and both approaches are still applied (Brouer
et al., 2015; Naseer et al., 2016). However, studies have tended to focus
on POPs rather than the equally meaningful direct perspective (e.g.,
Chang et al., 2009; Miller et al., 2008). Finally, leading figures in pol-
itics research mention both in the same breath which underscores their
conceptual proximity (Hochwarter, 2012).
The research stream further suggests that the political persuasion of
others requires social skills (Kimura, 2015; Mintzberg, 1983). Hence,
political skill is understood as “the ability to effectively understand
others at work, and to use such knowledge to influence others to act in
ways that enhance one's personal and/or organizational objectives”
(Ahearn et al., 2004, p. 311; Mintzberg, 1983). Taken together, POPs,
political behavior, and political skill are the three major concepts of
organizational politics research (Kapoutsis and Thanos, 2016). Younger
ideas such as political will (the motivation to exert political influence)
have indeed been theoretically established, yet received relatively little
H. Franke and K. Foerstl
empirical attention (Treadway et al., 2005c). We therefore focus on the
three strongly related and well-established concepts.
2.1. The nascent political perspective on PSM teams/buying centers
Empirical PSM scholarship, so far, recognizes organizational politics
in PSM team literature in three main studies. Other notable contribu-
tions have focused on politics at the supply chain level of inter-firm
integration (Thornton, 2013; Thornton et al., 2016). At the team level,
Moses and Åhlström (2008) contend that functional silo-thinking and
misaligned goals lead to the “seek [ing of] information which supports
their [own function's] hunches while ignoring contrary evidence”
(Moses and Åhlström, 2008, p. 97) – political behavior in the sense of
original definitions (Allen et al., 1979). Furthermore, the authors
identify functional interdependency and function specific motives and
incentives as sources of misalignment and politics. Moreover, PSM re-
search differentiates positive and negative effects of politics. Marshall
et al. (2015) take political goals as origins of political behavior and
observe that outsourcing projects driven by long-term managerial goals
(e.g., personal reputation) are more likely to succeed than projects
driven by short-term goals (e.g., attainment of financial benefits).
Stanczyk et al. (2015) argue that functional goal misalignment and
power imbalance combined exert negative effects on teams' procedural
rationality through political behavior and that reliance on creative, as
opposed to fact-based, intuition reduces rationality.
Beyond the emerging representation of politics in empirical PSM
work, frameworks of OBB have highlighted that politics are also rooted
in original conceptual models of the purchasing research domain.
Organizational buying has been characterized as a complex multi-
person and multi-objective process that can lead to both conflicts
among buying center (i.e., team) members and also “politicking” that
seeks to overcome or maneuver around conflicts of interest via influ-
encing (Sheth, 1973). Similarly, Webster and Wind (1972) postulated
that “personal-political tactics” (p.18) play a significant role in buying
teams. The authors mirror the notion of POPs (Ferris and Kacmar,
1992) in their discussion of personal ties and favors as determinants of
buying decisions. Furthermore, OBB resonates with the extant pub-
lished project-level PSM politics evidence in Marshall et al. (2015) as it
distinguishes task-related motives (e.g., sourcing item quality or
quantity) from personal political motives (e.g., promotion). Also, more
recent OBB work implicitly addresses politics as it refers to sourcing as a
non-linear and rationally bounded process (Makkonen et al., 2012).
Further it is characterized by dominance-seeking and controlling be-
havior of members during negotiations which are conceptually close to
political tactics (Rajala and Tidström, 2017).
In summary, we can find emerging empirical work on political PSM
teams and recognition of the general idea of politics in original OBB
frameworks and thereafter following literature. The mission of this
study is to deepen and enhance the conceptual understanding of PSM
team-level politics. This will allow for middle-range theory building in
the PSM team context as described in Garver (2019) by making use of
the established concepts and empirical insights in general management
literature. To accomplish this, we perform a cross-disciplinary review
and elaboration, whose methods we describe in the following.
3. Research methods
3.1. Sampling process
Our review takes methodological guidance from two published re-
view studies in the field (Koberg and Longoni, 2019; Quarshie et al.,
2016). We searched for general management literature in the following
databases: ABI/Inform Research, Scopus, EBSCO Business Source
Complete, and Elsevier ScienceDirect. For all database searches, we
only considered published primary empirical journal articles and ex-
cluded doctoral dissertations, books, and conference proceedings, etc.,
3
Journal of Purchasing and Supply Management 26 (2020) 100608
as is commonly practiced in PSM research (e.g., Delgado García et al.,
2015; Quarshie et al., 2016). Our sample thus excludes published meta-
analyses, which can be found in Miller et al. (2008), Higgins et al.
(2003), Munyon et al. (2015), and Bing et al. (2011). These studies
provide comprehensive overviews on each of the three popular politics
concepts – behavior, perception, and skill – yet no integration across
them, which is part of our mission. Notably, the two earlier published
semantic reviews on politics we identified either chose a narrow lit-
erature sample focusing on conceptualizations only (Doldor, 2007) or
focused on a limited sub-field of management literature for sampling
(Weissenberger-Eibl and Teufel, 2011). We applied search terms taken
from influential articles in the field (e.g., Eisenhardt and Bourgeois,
1988; Ferris and Kacmar, 1992) – “organizational politic*” OR “political
behavior” OR “political behaviour” OR “politics in organization*” OR
“politics in decision*” OR “perception* of politic*” OR “politics perception*”
OR “political skill*” OR “strategic decision making” OR “strategic decision-
making” – along with a selection of terms pointing towards empirical
methods following Zimmermann and Foerstl (2014) 2 in a title and
abstract search. We retrieved 1400 references in total.
3.2. Inclusion criteria
Researchers must “determine the quality and rigor of primary stu-
dies before synthesizing their findings” (Durach et al., 2017, p. 8).
Consequently, journal rankings and impact factors are common proxies
to quality and rigor in meta and review studies in scientific manage-
ment literature (e.g., Cankurtaran et al., 2013; Franke and Foerstl,
2018; Quarshie et al., 2016; Vanneste et al., 2014). We applied a quality
filter to the retrieved references also because higher ranked studies tend
to be more transparently reported, a necessary condition to conducting
a thorough literature review (Aytug et al., 2012; Durach et al., 2017).
We use a composite ranking of the three major European Journal
Rankings, namely the Dutch EJL ranking, the German VHB list, and the
UK ABS list. We do not expect a significant influence of the particular
ranking choice, since popular rankings list similar journals. To ensure
journal quality, we only considered journals ranked in the above-
mentioned list (not ranked to a certain level) an equipped with a 5-year
Thomson Reuters Impact Factor of 1.5 or higher. Our impact bench-
mark is comparable to other recent review and meta-studies to balance
between permeability and data quality (e.g., Bruton and Lau, 2008;
Foerstl et al., 2016; Geyskens et al., 2009). We follow the notion of
being inclusive rather than excluding potentially meaningful studies ex-
ante (Denyer and Tranfield, 2009). Anyhow, quality judgment via
journal rankings must not be the ultimate selection criterion for a sys-
tematic literature review (Denyer and Tranfield, 2009; Durach et al.,
2017). Therefore, we developed four additional purposeful inclusion
criteria that guided our selection in subsequent phases. We restrict our
sample to studies that (1) observe human interaction (e.g., rather than
quantitative decision models) (2) in business environments (e.g., rather
than public or federal contexts) (3) in the course of strategic decisions
(e.g., rather than shop floor) that (4) relate to organizational politics
(i.e., political behavior, POPs, or political skill).
We applied the criteria to all high quality references by manual
screening using a publication's title and abstract and, where in doubt,
including the main text of the publication. After the screening, we ex-
amined the remaining articles in depth. Also during this process, we
2
We extended the original Zimmermann, F., Foerstl, K., 2014. A Meta-
Analysis of the “Purchasing and Supply Management Practice–Performance
Link”. Journal of Supply Chain Management 50 (3), 37–54. search terms to:
(“performance” OR “efficiency” OR “effectiveness” OR “efficacy” OR “func-
tioning” OR “outcome*” OR “source*” OR “antecedent*” OR “origin*” OR
“drive*” OR “root*” OR “effect*” OR “decision*” OR “decid*”) AND (“em-
pirical” OR “survey*” OR “case stud*” OR “field stud*” OR “sampl*” OR “SEM”
OR “structur* equation modeling” OR “path analy*” OR “correlat*” OR “re-
gression” OR “factor analys*”).
H. Franke and K. Foerstl
Fig. 1. Publication selection process.
strived to be inclusive rather than exclusive. Out of the total 1400 re-
trieved articles, 320 met the quality criteria based on impact factor and
journal ranking. Among these references, 87 were duplicates, 45 were
excluded since they did not observe human interaction, 22 were ex-
cluded since they did not concern business environments, two were
excluded due to non-strategic decisions, and 66 did not observe politics.
Finally, 91 publications on organizational politics were identified. Since
literature screening and selection is commonly the most unreliable step
in the selection process, three scholars re-screened 100 randomly se-
lected papers and made consistent choices with the original for 89.7%
of the cases. Thus, our inter-rater reliability well exceeds the re-
commended level of 70% as applied in Carter and Easton (2011). We
closed the final data search in April 2018 and commenced with the
analysis. Fig. 1 summarizes the whole search and evaluation process.
3.3. Thematic analysis process
“Linking themes across the various core contributions wherever
possible and highlighting such links is an important part of the re-
porting process” (Tranfield et al., 2003, p. 219). Still, Tranfield and
colleagues find that business research lacks appreciation of such ana-
lysis techniques compared to other disciplines such as the medical
sciences. To identify and relate “themes” in politics research, we stick to
the notion of thematic analysis (or thematic synthesis) discussed by
Tranfield et al. (2003). Their sources describe the approach as “the
bringing together of findings on a chosen theme, the results of which
should, in conceptual terms, be greater than the sum of parts”
(Campbell et al., 2003, p. 672). In short, thematic analysis is the
comparison and grouping of relevant contributions into themes that
represent major topics in the literature.
It is important to note that themes are areas of interests or hot topics
similar to “future research themes” or “topic fields” as used in other
recent studies (Schorsch et al., 2017; Wieland et al., 2016). Thus,
themes are not restricted to one particular theoretical approach,
methodology, or unit of analysis. Furthermore, themes do not aggregate
single studies into a theoretically or methodologically homogenous set
but are designed to show thematic (in terms of meaning) rather than
simple structural similarity (Campbell et al., 2003). Accordingly, this
open and inductive approach is ideal to develop upon the little PSM
team politics evidence using thematic areas of interest that help to trace
the How's in PSM politics in the future (Durach et al., 2017; Whetten,
1989). We thereby explicitly do not attempt causally relating across
units of analysis but show linkages worth exploring by associating
thematic results. Hence, our methods take the dangers of transferal of
evidence across levels of analyses and study contexts (PSM vs. general
management) into account. Notably, this also leads to one of our ex-
plicit limitations. We accept this limiting factor to focus our analysis
more on the underlying themes and theoretical approaches within the
4
Journal of Purchasing and Supply Management 26 (2020) 100608
literature sample instead of reporting excessive descriptive information.
Vivid example for the merits of focusing on the inherent themes and
meaning of papers are the undetected theoretical resemblances between
PSM and general management concepts, such as political goals and
psychological needs (Marshall et al., 2015; Treadway et al., 2005c).
We allow all sampled contributions to be coded into several themes
and theories to avoid losing information in the analysis. However, no
study used more than two theories or fit to more than two themes in the
end. The grouping into thematic areas was executed in a recursive back-
and-forth process in which the two primary researchers strived to
achieve “fit” of already grouped themes to data still to be grouped
(avoiding ungrouped studies if possible). Whenever disagreements oc-
curred, a third scholar with neutral stance was included to help resolve
the issue.
A theme had to appear in at least five different studies to be in-
cluded in order to assure thematic relevance. The five-paper threshold
was chosen ex-ante to the thematic analysis to avoid in- or exclusion of
themes by varying the threshold ex-post. Still, we found our grouping to
be robust to an increased threshold in ex-post robustness checks. Lower
thresholds would inflate the number of themes and capture niche is-
sues, which contradicts the idea of thematic analysis. Furthermore, we
coded all studies' research focus in terms of their models’ main per-
spective on politics (i.e., antecedents, outcomes, proactive avoidance,
or reactive management), the level of analysis (i.e., individual, dyad, or
team), and a range of other descriptive statistics across published ar-
ticles as presented in the next section. We continue to present our re-
sults in detail. For comprehensiveness and brevity, we immediately
connect our thematic results to the cross-functional PSM team context
in the subsequent sections.
4. Results
4.1. General observations
Most of the sampled contributions focused on outcomes of politics
and POPs in particular. In addition, antecedents to organizational pol-
itics receive significant research attention, while only 5.5% of all con-
tributions focus on proactively avoiding and reactively managing pol-
itics (Table 1). This may be caused by the ongoing discussion whether
politics might also yield desirable effects in addition to or despite the
many undesirable effects (e.g., Hochwarter, 2012; Hsiung et al., 2012).
Most studies issue surveys to employees and managers in a wide variety
of manufacturing and service industries predominantly residing in
North America. Strikingly, 37.3% of all analyzed contributions do not
ground their studies in a guiding or overarching theory. The remaining
chose social exchange theory or work stress theory as well as a wide
variety of less spread lenses such as balance theory (e.g., Treadway
et al., 2007), conservation of resources theory (e.g., Wu et al., 2012), or
H. Franke and K. Foerstl Journal of Purchasing and Supply Management 26 (2020) 100608

Table 1 Table 2
Sample distribution across journals. Sample descriptive statistics.
Journal Title Articles Focal construct

Journal of Applied Psychology* 14 Perceptions of politics (POPs) 36

Journal of Vocational Behavior 12 Political skill 29
Journal of Organizational Behavior 11 Various 16
Journal of Management* 10 Political behavior 10
Journal of Business and Psychology 8 Research perspective
Human Relations* 6 Outcomes 75.5%
Journal of Management Studies* 6 Antecedents 12.7%
Academy of Management Journal* 3 Avoidance (proactive) 5.5%
European Journal of Work and Org. Psych. 3 Other/none 5.5%
Journal of Occupational and Org. Psych. 3 Management (reactive) 0.8%
Org. Behavior and Human Decision Processes* 3 Level of analysis
Leadership Quarterly 2 Individual 59.4%
Organization Science* 2 Dyad (Supervisor-Employee) 32.3%
Administrative Science Quarterly* 1 Team 5.2%
Asia Pacific Journal of Management 1 Organizationa –
British Journal of Management 1 Theme
Information and Organization 1 Personality & emotions 25.2%
Journal of Operations Management* 1 Supervision & leadership 17.3%
Organization Studies* 1 None dominant 15.1%
Public Administration Review 1 Organizational citizenship behavior 11.0%
Tourism Management 1 Turnover & retention 9.4%
n = 91; * FT50 Journal Career 5.5%
Diversity 5.5%
Justice & trust 5.5%
Organizational support 5.5%
uncertainty management theory (Andrews et al., 2009). Notably, no
None dominant/n 22.0%
sampled contribution applied the grand organizational theories (i.e. Theoretical background
resource-based view, resource dependency theory, or transaction costs None dominant 35.4%
economics), which are commonly used to study PSM phenomena (Spina Other 27.0%
et al., 2016; Wynstra et al., 2019). In fact, we too observe that general Social exchange theory 11.5%
Social influence/role theory 9.4%
management articles are more frequently grounded in behavioral and
(Work) stress theory 7.3%
social theories compared to publications in PSM and logistics journals Socio-analytic theory 5.2%
(Wieland et al., 2016). Despite an increasing number of studies on Expectancy theory 4.2%
behavioral, human aspects in PSM, scholars in the domain rarely apply None dominant/n 37.3%
behavioral theories but tend to adapt theory commonly known in the a
The organizational level was omitted since it is little estab-
discipline.
lished (Hochwarter, 2012) and thus not yet conclusive enough to
Fig. 2 and Table 2 give an overview of the development of the
provide a solid literature base.
overall politics stream over the sampled period of 30 years and rank the
most prominent outlets that published the papers in our sample. In
a descriptive way to later to elaborate on the connection and research
addition, Fig. 3 shows how the several themes that we identified in our
potentials of four most impactful themes in light of ongoing PSM dis-
content analysis have emerged and declined over time. Fig. 3 displays a
cussions. We thereby construct a future research framework (Fig. 4)
smoothening moving average to identify global trends rather than
that connects our inductively identified themes with extant PSM team
short-term changes. It distinguishes seemingly temporal phenomena,
politics evidence. We were guided by the Structure-Conduct-Perfor-
such as the focus on Career, from rather constant research efforts at
mance paradigm (Caves, 1992), which we adapted to the context of
relatively low intensity, such as Organizational Support, or relatively
integration as in earlier supply chain research (Ralston et al., 2015).
high intensity, such as Personality & emotions.
Our approach matches Structure with structural antecedents from the
The following paragraphs present details on the identified themes in

Fig. 2. Sample distribution over time.

5
H. Franke and K. Foerstl Journal of Purchasing and Supply Management 26 (2020) 100608

Fig. 3. Themes distribution over time (moving average).

Fig. 4. Framework for future research on PSM team politics.

literature, such as misaligned functional goals or power imbalance. The
Process dimension represents the behavioral interactions in sourcing
teams indicated in PSM studies such as politics via agenda setting or
information distortion but also conflicts among functions. Finally, the
Performance dimension shows outcomes at the team/project level in-
dicated in the extant PSM literature such as achieved cost savings or
project objectives. In addition to the relatively broad framework, we
also offer several tangible ways how to exactly expand today's knowl-
edge and how to address the themes we found in future research. These
avenues are derived in the following.
4.2. Presentation of identified themes
4.2.1. Careerism
This theme encompasses employees' advancement at work, in par-
ticular their career success and obtaining of promotions. Evidence
shows that POPs triggers citizenship behavior directed at advancing
one's career (Hsiung et al., 2012) whereas political skill has positive
effects on career success (Blickle et al., 2010; Wei et al., 2010), pro-
motability (Gentry et al., 2012), as well as Guanxi, which are informal
tiesthat help climbing the career ladder (Wei et al., 2012). Furthermore,
political skill helps building and using network resources for career
growth (Wei et al., 2010, 2012) and drives perceived control (Zellars

6
H. Franke and K. Foerstl
et al., 2008), reputation (Liu et al., 2007), and satisfaction at work
(Kolodinsky et al., 2004). Overall, two fundamental perspectives of
political skill emerge in connection to careerism: the enabler and the
coping resource. Political skill serves as enabler to capitalize on extra-
version, agreeableness, and proactive personality in terms of perfor-
mance (Blickle et al., 2008; Blickle et al., 2010; Sun and van Emmerik,
2015) and helps to effectively exert influence through political behavior
(Blickle et al., 2011). Alternatively, political skill serves as coping re-
source that reduces emotional labor when behaving politically, de-
pression when facing workplace ostracism, and anxiety and burnout at
work (Meurs et al., 2010; Perrewé et al., 2004; Treadway et al., 2005c;
Wu et al., 2012).
4.2.2. Personality & emotions
POPs have a number of negative implications such as job strain
(Harris and Kacmar, 2005; Rosen et al., 2013), stress (e.g., Wiltshire
et al., 2014), job anxiety resulting in tension, nervousness, worry (Ferris
et al., 1996a, 1996b), frustration (Rosen et al., 2009), and tension
(Hochwarter et al., 2010; Rosen and Hochwarter, 2014). POPs further
reduces the sense of belonging, competence, and autonomy in em-
ployees, endangers psychologically safe climates, and causes emotional
labor – meaning “dissonance between felt and displayed emotions” (Li
et al., 2014; Rosen et al., 2013; Treadway et al., 2005c, p. 233). These
manifold negative psychological states frequently reduce employee
performance and morale, employee satisfaction (Rosen et al., 2009), or
even cause depressions (Rosen and Hochwarter, 2014). However, re-
search has identified that understanding of other's political actions,
individual reputation, or good relations to the supervisor can alleviate
some negative effects of POPs (Ferris et al., 1996b; Harris and Kacmar,
2005; Hochwarter et al., 2007). Emotional intelligence (i.e., under-
standing and use of emotions) can even strengthen emotional com-
mitment for employees in political workplaces (Vigoda-Gadot and
Meisler, 2010). Additionally, research has identified effects of person-
ality traits in connection to POPs: agreeableness helps to still perform
under POPs while employees with a tendency to seek personal gains by
manipulation will engage into political behavior as a response
(Wiltshire et al., 2014; Witt et al., 2002). Conversely, conscientious
employees tend to work productively and refrain from political beha-
vior despite high POPs (Wiltshire et al., 2014). Finally, Andrews et al.
(2003) observe that a strong personal belief in reciprocity of effort and
reward drives withdrawal from political workplaces.
4.2.3. Turnover & retention
Numerous studies have found that turnover intentions (i.e., the in-
tention to leave the job) are driven directly by perceptions of organi-
zational politics (POPs) (Andrews et al., 2003; Hochwarter et al., 1999;
Rosen et al., 2009), and that the intent to turnover likely leads to action
(Wesolowski et al., 1989). Conversely, only few find no such relation
(Lee and Peccei, 2011; Randall et al., 1999). Maslyn and Fedor (1998)
add detail and that POPs drive organization-level turnover intentions
yet not at the group-level. Self-promotion behavior (Harrell-Cook et al.,
1999) and perceived justice (Byrne, 2005; Harris et al., 2007) may re-
lieve the pressure to withdraw. Interestingly, POPs and turnover in-
tentions interact to reduce actual withdrawal (Wesolowski et al., 1989)
suggesting that voicing the intent to leave in the sense of bluffing may
be a political tactic itself. Finally, trust and job satisfaction are pro-
cesses that translate POPs into turnover (Rosen et al., 2009; Vigoda,
2000) whereas older and long-tenured employees show signs of habi-
tuation and inertia in political workplaces (Maslyn and Fedor, 1998;
Vigoda, 2001; Wesolowski et al., 1989).
4.2.4. Diversity
Studies capture diversity along several dimensions such as culture,
ethnicity (“surface-level”), gender, and functional background (“deep-
level”) and is associated predominantly with political skill and POPs in
the sample. Diverse ethnicities and foreign accents have negative
7
Journal of Purchasing and Supply Management 26 (2020) 100608
outcomes as they obstruct relationship-building with supervisors when
employees lack political skill and reduce the perceived level of political
skill, respectively (Brouer et al., 2009; Huang et al., 2013). Further-
more, the contextualizing value of gender is addressed and suggested to
explain variance in political skill's effect on individual performance
(DuBrin, 1989; Snell et al., 2014). In terms of POPs, higher age seems to
reduce perceived politics, suggesting effects of habituation and cultural
differences (Maslyn and Fedor, 1998; Vigoda, 2001). Finally, different
combinations of gender and ethnicity can affect how anxious and dis-
satisfied employees feel in political workplaces (Ferris et al., 1996a).
4.2.5. Justice & trust
Several studies report on justice in political spheres and find that
formalization and decentralized decision-making consistently improve
justice, foster speaking up behavior, and reduce POPs (Aryee et al.,
2004; Ferris et al., 1996b; Vigoda, 2001). Harris et al. (2007) find that
procedural justice, distributive justice, and POPs interact and detect
that employees are most satisfied in non-political and twofold just
working conditions. Other researchers, however, found no support for
justice as a moderator of the POPs-job performance link (Byrne, 2005).
While some studies find no significant direct or moderating effect of
trust (Parker et al., 1995), Bouckenooghe (2012) does find evidence for
a positive direct effect of trust in top management on commitment to
change and a negative moderation on the POPs-commitment link.
Further, the reputation of an individual serves to steer effects of poli-
tical behavior on one's performance. Political actions of well-reputable
employees are considered to contribute towards self- and supervisor-
rated performance (Hochwarter et al., 2007).
4.2.6. Supervision & leadership
POPs generally reduces employee's satisfaction with supervisors
(Ferris et al., 1996b) but it can also be reduced among employees and
improve morale when supervisors provide feedback and clear ways to
obtain promotions (Ferris and Kacmar, 1992; Rosen et al., 2006).
Likewise, the relation to supervisors, work group cohesion, and ad-
vancement opportunities reduce individually felt POPs on the super-
visor-, co-worker and clique-, and firm-wide level, respectively (Ferris
and Kacmar, 1992). Moreover, good relations to supervisors can in-
crease commitment to the organization (Maslyn and Fedor, 1998) and
further decrease POPs (Ferris and Kacmar, 1992; Harris and Kacmar,
2005; Valle and Perrewe, 2000). Additionally, Naseer et al. (2016) find
that being close to an unethical leader attenuates employee perfor-
mance and Witt (1998) adds that goal congruence between employee
and supervisor can safeguard employee performance in political
spheres.
Several studies also observe political behavior in Supervision & lea-
dership and some connect it to POPs. Harrell-Cook et al. (1999) find that
political behavior (i.e., self-promotion and ingratiation) can preserve
employee satisfaction in high POPs environments, suggesting that en-
gaging in politics can sustain satisfaction. In a similar vein, impression
management towards the supervisor has positive effects for supervisor-
rated performance, however only in non-political environments
(Zivnuska et al., 2004). Finally, studies show that supervisors who ex-
ploit control mechanisms create political enclaves that hamper
speaking up behavior. Though, negative consequences are less severe
when employees understand the political actions of their supervisors
(Ferris et al., 1996a; Hayes and Walsham, 2001).
4.2.7. Organizational citizenship behavior
Organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) has been formally de-
fined as “individual behavior that is […] not directly or explicitly re-
cognized by the formal reward system” (Organ, 1988, p. 4). Simply, it
means going the extra mile at work. OCB has been distinguished from
job performance and differentiated into OCBI (OCB towards in-
dividuals, i.e. co-workers or supervisors) and OCBO (OCB towards the
organization) by Williams and Anderson (1991). Sampled studies
H. Franke and K. Foerstl
mostly discuss effects of POPs on OCB and disagree fundamentally.
Some find negative effects for OCBO only (Byrne, 2005; Randall et al.,
1999) whereas others detect negative implications for OCBI (Lee and
Peccei, 2011) and again others find negative effects on both (Chang
et al., 2009) or none of the two dimensions (Kacmar et al., 2011;
Maslyn and Fedor, 1998). Literature shows that employees with strong
ability to understand and adapt to social demands on the job are less
affected by POPs with respect to their OCBI and OCBO (Chang et al.,
2012). However, employees that are motivated but cannot play along
due to insufficient social skills, significantly reduce their OCB. Fur-
thermore, studies show that good treatment triggers higher reciproca-
tion especially under political conditions (Kacmar et al., 2011; Naseer
et al., 2016).
4.2.8. Organizational support
Organizational support denotes the “extent to which the organiza-
tion values their [the employees’] contributions and cares about their
well-being” (Aselage and Eisenberger, 2003, p. 493) and is exclusively
discussed in connection with POPs in our sample. POPs directly de-
creases the perceived level of organizational support on several hier-
archical levels and, in turn, individual performance and job involve-
ment (Cropanzano et al., 1997; Hochwarter et al., 2003). Furthermore,
Lee and Peccei (2011) found individuals reduce their OCBI to a lesser
degree in non-supportive organizations (as compared to supportive
ones) with rising POPs. This counter-intuitive effect could be caused by
the opportunity to gain, which poorly supported employees feel in
political environments (Lee and Peccei, 2011). Finally, Li et al. (2014)
contend that perceived insider status (i.e., social support from the or-
ganization) can safeguard voicing behavior under political conditions
but also that employees who do not feel as supported insiders tend to
avoid speaking up under high POPs.
5. Discussion
Our review showed that evidence on political teams is not only
scarce in the PSM domain but also underrepresented outside our dis-
cipline. At the same time, inter-individual behavior and organization-
wide perceptions of employees are covered by today's politics literature
(e.g., Miller et al., 2008; Sun and Chen, 2017), which we condensed in
our review. Now, PSM scholars may assume that first “general man-
agement” inquiry in political teams is necessary before developing
middle-range PSM theory. Contrarily, we argue based on our review
that PSM scholarship has a chance not only to inform practice on the
hitherto neglected phenomenon on politics in PSM/SCM teams
(Thornton et al., 2016) but can also advance inter-disciplinary con-
tributions at the unexplored team level in general (Vigoda-Gadot and
Vashdi, 2012). Consistently, Wynstra et al. (2019) argue that “in-
dividual PSM studies – at best – work with different disciplines” (p. 31)
to span disciplinary boundaries. To assist such future contributions, we
i) derive epistemological, instrumental, and theoretical guidance, ii)
elaborate the most important politics themes in the PSM context, and
iii) give a general overview of possible future research avenues in the
following.
5.1. Epistemological, instrumental, and theoretical guidance
One of the central epistemological idiosyncrasies of PSM/SCM re-
search is that “findings in PSM studies are often attributed to contextual
conditions” (Durach et al., 2017, p. 7) and that PSM as a discipline is
interested in context-specific phenomena in general (Schorsch et al.,
2017). Consistently, the reviewed PSM team research focuses on spe-
cialized cross-functional team activities such as sourcing, outsourcing,
or planning activities (Marshall et al., 2015; Moses and Åhlström, 2008;
Oliva and Watson, 2011; Stanczyk et al., 2015) and PSM studies re-
cognize alternative temporal conditions of integration, namely tem-
poral and permanent teams (Foerstl et al., 2015; Germain et al., 1994).
8
Journal of Purchasing and Supply Management 26 (2020) 100608
Conversely, we observe that the reviewed general management pub-
lications often describe the task, people, and context in team studies
less intensively and tend to pool across practical settings. This tendency
may drive paradoxical findings of zero effect sizes in meta-studies, also
on team phenomena (e.g., De Wit et al., 2012). Consequently, PSM is
the ideal soil to generate middle-range theory on politics in specialized
PSM teams by promoting rich descriptions of their organizational
context, team task, team members, type of functional integration, and
organizational surrounding (Garver, 2019). Thus, the first piece of
guidance to PSM scholarship is: PSM scholarship should not hesitate until
general inquiry is made but – based on this review – engage in research on
politics in teams to contribute to the understanding of team politics in PSM.
PSM/SCM research is unique in two further ways: concepts fre-
quently have several ways of operationalization and the unit of analysis
is often fuzzy and hard to identify (Durach et al., 2017). Our review
showed several constructs subsumed under “organizational politics”, in
particular the finite POPs and political skill with their accepted in-
struments (Ferris et al., 2005; Kacmar and Carlson, 1997) and the non-
finite political behavior divided in numerous distinct tactics (e.g.,
Kipnis et al., 1980). Since PSM research is already challenged by the
heterogeneity of constructs and instruments today (Durach et al.,
2017), future studies should be aware of this possible pitfall as politics
research transcends to the cross-functional team-level. All three iden-
tified concepts predominantly take the perspective of the individual
within a larger organization, such as a departments or firms. Moreover,
the few team politics studies tend to divide and adapt original instru-
ments into organization-level and team-level items and obtain mean-
ingful results (e.g., Maslyn and Fedor, 1998). Some, however, assume
parity between politics on the organizational and the team-level (Bai
et al., 2016), mostly due to the fact that most available team studies are
intra-functional or intra-departmental instead of cross-functional.
While an effect of organizational-level politics on team politics is
plausible, assuming parity may be dangerous because several studies
prove cross-level differences, for instance in the strength of political
sub-climates (Ferris and Kacmar, 1992; Maslyn and Fedor, 1998;
Treadway et al., 2005a). Hence, the second piece of guidance to PSM
scholarship is: Future PSM research should treat politics in teams and in
their surrounding organizations as related but distinct and carefully adapt
the established organization-level instruments to the inter-functional PSM
team context where necessary.
Hardly any studies among today's politics research ground their
arguments in transaction cost or resources-based theory, while the few
published PSM politics studies do use these “go-to-theories” of PSM
scholars. Furthermore, no team-level PSM publication hitherto con-
sidered the widely spread concept of POPs from general management
literature. This inter-disciplinary misalignment may be due to the in-
herited tendency of PSM research to theorize about legal entities and
their relations (i.e., buyers and suppliers) and devote actions and be-
havior to firms rather than individuals. This tendency is not flawed in
itself but rather a coping mechanism to the idiosyncratic complexity of
choosing the unit of analysis in supply chains as multi-level phenomena
(Durach et al., 2017). Thus, PSM scholarship seems to shy away from
using behavioral theories and favor theoretical ideas that fit the inter-
actions of legal entities (Knemeyer and Naylor, 2011; Spina et al.,
2016). However, natural entities (i.e., individuals or teams of in-
dividuals) take the real decisions that are attributed to suppliers or
buyers in organizational theory (Hambrick and Mason, 1984). A main
learning from our study shall be that this aggregation enables the ap-
plication of “classical” PSM theory but may impede our understanding
of politics in PSM teams. Conversely, a more intensive integration of
behavioral actor-based theory in addition to PSM-specific concepts may
enhance our understanding of relational dynamics PSM, including team
politics, and foster inter-disciplinary discussion within this emerging
research stream. Hence, despite the PSM discipline's aspiration to grow
more distinct, we want to stress the merits and necessity of applying
actor-based theories when studying behavioral PSM phenomena such as
H. Franke and K. Foerstl Journal of Purchasing and Supply Management 26 (2020) 100608

team politics. This notion is reflected in the idea of “unity in diversity”

Concept to achieve embeddedness in PSM realm

2000); Skills in purchasing management (Knight

Resources and management attention as success

Requirements for PSM leadership (Trent, 1996)
and leadership types (e.g., Foerstl et al., 2015)
Cross-functional HRM practices (Carter et al.,
recently put forward by (Wynstra et al., 2019). If we continued ex-

Career or attainment-focused goals of PSM

clusively applying PSM “go-to-theories” while transcending from buyer-

factors (Trent and Monczka, 1994, 2005)

supplier relationships towards PSM team research, we may be ap-
proaching a theoretical boundary between organizational theory and

managers (Marshall et al., 2015)

behavioral theory.
On a practical note, we advise scholars to search for theoretical
boundary-spanners to overcome today's theoretical gap. For instance,
for the emerging research stream on PSM teams, OBB literature com-
prehends organizational buying as a “multiphase, multiperson, multi-

et al., 2014)
departmental, and multiobjective process” (Johnston and Lewin, 1996,
p. 1) and can help theorize behavioral hypotheses in the PSM com-
munity. Similarly, social network theory can span across firms and in-
dividuals as actors to ease the transitioning from firm-level to team or

Two effects may result from cross-functional experience: selfish goal-

individual-level unit of analyses (Wasserman and Faust, 1994). Only

The displayed FRQ are the ones that have the highest relevance for PSM research. Other results of the elaborations for the PSM field can be found in an appendix.
‘Caring’ support may create communion while increased available
when PSM can find and utilize such theoretical boundary-spanners or

Cross-functional training can close representational gaps between

transactive memory to coordinate or hurt the team when leaders

resources may enhance distribution fights via POPs (Pfeffer and

functional areas and create mutual understanding that channels
directed behavior or collaborating cross-functional integration
apply theoretical approaches detected in the systematic search more

Formal leadership can serve the team when leaders use their
intensively, we can achieve mutual exchange of nested implications
across disciplines. Thus, our third recommendation is: As PSM scholars
continue to address team politics as behavioral phenomenon, their choice of
theory and unit of analysis should reflect the origin of the observed beha-

Salancik, 1974) (interaction effects expected)

vioral constructs to allow cross-disciplinary discussion.

5.2. Elaboration of key themes in light of ongoing PSM debates

Table 3 summarizes the most relevant future research avenues that

were derived from the identified themes in the following sections. The

behave opportunistically
ones that were deemed less connected to ongoing PSM streams of in-

turnover intentions
quiry are summarized in an appendix. All avenues may guide entirely
new ways of researching cross-functional PSM teams.
Example(s)

5.2.1. Human resource and talent management in PSM

Two of our identified themes address employees’ professional life as
their Career advancement and choices pertaining to their Turnover &
How can job rotation foster integration through the

How can felt support or individual traits reduce the

How can cross-functional training direct individual

politicization of well-equipped PSM project teams?

What influence do different leadership types have
retention from or at their current job. While the few PSM team politics
political/negotiation skills to foster collaboration

studies have partly considered these two themes as career goals in

reduction of political influence behavior?

outsourcing projects (Marshall et al., 2015), careers and turnover of

on the effectiveness of sourcing teams?

employees in PSM have remained underrepresented. Yet, the themes

resonate strongly with the ongoing debate around human resource and
talent management in the PSM function. Early PSM studies on the
Possible research question

matter have taken higher-level perspectives on human resource prac-

and reduce turnover?

tices and how they affect organizational-level outcomes (Carter et al.,

2000; Jayaram and Vickery, 1998). Based on that, studies highlighted
firm-level processes that translate human resource management into
PSM success or failures, such as organizational culture (McAfee et al.,
2002). The results of our review are closely tied with the relatively
recent developments recognizing that PSM requires individual-level
skills (e.g., Knight et al., 2014) and understands the impact of human
support and support as resources in
Turnover as loss of expertise, cross-
Lateral career moves (job rotation),

resource practices in a behavioral and cross-functional PSM space

Competing concepts of perceived
functional training, Political skill
political behavior, collaboration

(Feisel et al., 2011; Foerstl et al., 2013).

Leadership type, opportunism,

Specifically, Knight et al. (2014) show that influencing and per-

Suggestions for future research questions (FRQ)a.

suasion are important skills for both strategic and tactical sourcing
decisions. This type of skill is conceptually close to political skill, which
transactive memory

will help employees advance on the career ladder (Blickle et al., 2010;
Wei et al., 2010); yet we do not know what implications the use of those
Key concepts

PSM teams

special skills has for the entire PSM team. Political skill may be misused
to entertain politics while favorable individual traits, such as con-
scientiousness, may catalyze political skills to foster collaboration in
PSM teams. So far, PSM research has only generally established that
Organizational Support

talent management, including comprehensive training, improves col-

Turnover & Retention

laboration (Foerstl et al., 2013). Thus, human resource and talent

Future Research

Leadership

management practices could be one possible way of directing politically

Supervision &

skilled PSM personnel's efforts toward an organizational goal and avoid

Careerism
Questions

political striving toward unidimensional goals. This research potential

Table 3

has been further underlined by the relevance of job rotation for cross-
a

functional collaboration in case study observations (Feisel et al., 2011).

9
H. Franke and K. Foerstl
Such cross-functional training may also reduce the tendency to with-
draw from politically charged environments via fostering the under-
standing of other functions' viewpoints. This is essential since with-
drawal means a loss of important information needed to complete
complex sourcing tasks. The negative consequences of PSM/SCM per-
sonnel turnover have been shown in the supply chain risk and inventory
management context (Alfaro and Tribó, 2003; Jiang et al., 2009).
Such research could be conducted using the lens of self-identity
theory and the notion of the possible-self, that is the self we like to
become (Markus and Nurius, 1986). This possible-self may be either a
collaborating servant to organizational goals driving cooperation in
PSM teams or an attaining servant to individual (i.e., functional) goals
(cf. Marshall et al., 2015) (see political goals in Fig. 4). This research
could advise practice whether human resource and talent management
practices can counter political bias and how they need to be applied to
foster collaboration in PSM teams.
5.2.2. Leadership and organization of PSM teams
PSM has been gaining relevance in organizations evolving from a set
of administrative tasks into its own functional space with strategic tasks
and significance. Given PSM's strategic nature and the cross-functional
coordination necessary to execute sourcing, PSM researchers have
asked how sourcing teams should be lead to maximize their success.
Our theme of Supervision & leadership resonates with this ongoing PSM
stream, creating potentials for future research. Extant contributions
have stressed several tasks a PSM team leader needs to fulfil (Trent,
1996), the influence of leadership styles (Driedonks et al., 2010), or
salience of leadership provided by team-external parties (Englyst et al.,
2008). However, assuming that “only a formal team leader can satisfy
many of the responsibilities associated with team leadership” (Trent,
1998, p. 50) may be dangerous as we lack conclusive empirical evi-
dence for the superiority of formal leaders and given evidence that
successful sourcing teams may also self-organize in a shared leadership
style (Stanczyk et al., 2015). Relatively little research attention has
been paid to different modes of PSM team leadership although the
question whether a team should govern itself (shared leadership), be
governed by an internal leader (formal or emergent) (e.g., Li et al.,
2012), or steered from an outside party (the "liaison role"; Foerstl et al.,
2015) remains unanswered. The results of our review inform this cur-
rent ambiguity in PSM research from the political perspective.
Supervisory or leadership status may create or diminish value
through organizational politics in cross-functional PSM teams, such as
sourcing teams. On the one hand, organizational politics literature
suggests that formally empowered individuals use their power and
trigger politics and dissatisfaction in work teams (Bai et al., 2016; Ferris
et al., 1996a; Stanczyk et al., 2015). On the other hand, so-called
transactive memory systems (i.e., individual knowledge and commu-
nication processes within groups) can enable well-informed leaders to
structure and catalyze team work by fostering effective communication
(e.g., Mell et al., 2014). The managerial choice of how to lead cross-
functional PSM teams (e.g., internal hierarchy, external control, or in-
ternal emergence/self-leadership) is relevant and it appears to be a
determining factor for success in cross-functional PSM teams (Naseer
et al., 2016). Following our agenda provides a possibility to add con-
textualized evidence on leadership and politics in PSM teams in line
with the maxims in section 5.1. In addition, this line of research may
extend the limited representation of sourcing team leadership in future
census of the sourcing literature compared to recent contributions
(Giunipero et al., 2018) and further develop the multi-disciplinary
character of PSM as a field (Wynstra et al., 2019).
5.2.3. Top management attention and support for PSM teams
Sourcing and other PSM tasks are receiving more and more top
management attention especially due to growing impact of sourcing
decisions and higher levels of maturity of global sourcing organizations
(Monczka and Trent, 1991). This phenomenon entertains a stream of
10
Journal of Purchasing and Supply Management 26 (2020) 100608
research that generally finds sourcing improved by top management
attention and commitment (Petersen et al., 2000). Trent and Monczka
(2005) put forward that successful global sourcing is characterized by
an executive steering committee and executive leader dedicated to PSM
and “extensive reliance on teams to analyze and propose sourcing
strategies” (p. 29). This combination of management attention and use
of teams is interesting from the political perspective and a possible
connection point between the hitherto under-researched “support-per-
formance link” (see Giunipero et al., 2018) and insights from our lit-
erature review based on the theme Organizational support.
Some PSM contributions interpret organizational support as the
extent of tangible management support for projects or initiatives in
terms of attention, time, and resources (e.g., Fawcett et al., 2006; Zhu
et al., 2008) whereas others adopts the caring and appreciating theo-
retical perspective in line with the theme in our study (Cantor et al.,
2012). We know that “caring” organizational support is incompatible
with POPs (e.g., Hochwarter et al., 2003). Yet, an alternative perspec-
tive emerges based on the notion of politics as contest for resources in
organizations (Allen et al., 1979). “Resource-providing” organizational
support from top management should thus increase political behavior
and POPs among corporate functions in PSM teams as more resources
are available and their distribution is unclear. It may be possible that
the established positive effects of management support to PSM
(Petersen et al., 2000; Trent and Monczka, 2005) can be strengthened.
To achieve that, PSM researchers need to be able to guide management
on how to best organize support to PSM without driving political dis-
tribution fights.
Specifically, the increase of overall tangible resources may drive
insecurity about the relative share of accessible resources for each of
the integrating functions. This insecurity in turn may trigger political
behavior seeking to maximize resources allocated to functional tasks
and impede them from achieving higher-level outcomes such as cost
savings or high capacity utilization (see Fig. 4). Conservation of re-
source theory helps setting up this research as it describes insecure
resource access as stressor (cf. Treadway et al., 2005b; Wu et al., 2012).
The theoretical divide between conceptualizations of organizational
support highlights the idiosyncrasy of competing concepts and con-
structs in 5.1. Hence, future PSM team research may contribute to the
disentanglement of coexisting theoretical interpretations of organiza-
tional support (Fig. 4 top half) and build grounded theory on support as
resources and felt appreciation in cross-functional PSM teams (Fig. 4
bottom half).
5.3. Managerial implications
This research informs PSM executives directing or participating in
cross-functional teams on pitfalls and possible opportunities of political
dynamics in cross-functional work, such as supplier selection or make-
or-buy decisions. However, given the large empirical gap, PSM practi-
tioners cannot count on scholarly research to explain political dynamics
in PSM teams in their entirety today. This is especially true for cross-
functional teams in both PSM and general management research. Yet,
studies highlight that managers can reduce political behavior and POPs
in teams by providing feedback, offering transparent advancement
opportunities, as well as defining and adhering to openly commu-
nicated policies. Most studies inherently assume political behavior and
perceived politics to have adverse effects. To date, this notion has been
uncontested in most contributions. However, comparably recent studies
begin to consider possible positive effects (e.g., Hochwarter, 2012;
Hsiung et al., 2012; Marshall et al., 2015). Our study opens up the large
body of general management politics research for PSM practitioners.
Furthermore, we provide quick access to focused areas of the literature
by grouping our results into themes. This way, PSM managers and
scholars can access branches of general organizational politics litera-
ture, but should not assume perfect validity for PSM team environ-
ments. Future PSM research will have to create more evidence to
H. Franke and K. Foerstl
provide a complete picture of politics in cross-functional PSM teams.
We suggest a guiding theoretical framework for inquiries that connect
the identified themes and extant PSM literature (Fig. 4) and provide
several tangible avenues as possible starting points for future research
(Table 3 an Appendix A). With this study, we hope to create more
awareness and interest in the under-researched phenomenon of team
politics in line with PSM's nature as boundary spanning field of research
(Wynstra et al., 2019).
5.4. Limitations
Our study faces four main limitations pertaining to our methods and
study approach. First, we restrict our sample to articles published in
internationally ranked research outlets. This may lead to the exclusion
of emerging topics published in conference proceedings or brown pa-
pers. We justify this quality threshold by our aspiration to report on
theoretically and methodologically transparent and solid research that
has undergone a rigorous review process only (Aytug et al., 2012;
Durach et al., 2017). Secondly, we require each theme to be associated
with at least five contributions. Given that we aimed to identify major
themes while capturing ongoing discussions within politics research,
we believe that a five-paper threshold is rather low. Post-hoc tests show
that the number of themes is robust to larger thresholds, thus indicating
that the effect of our quality threshold is negligible. Third, we have
weighted the results of our review to focus on developing unique re-
search avenues for themes that directly correspond to streams of PSM
literature. We accept this additional subjectivity to gain higher PSM
relevance yet still report all findings in compliance with the maxims of
replicability and transparency (Denyer and Tranfield, 2009). Finally,
our thematic analysis allows grouping of diverse publications in terms
of method, theory, and unit of analysis to find themes of similar
meaning rather than similar method, theory, etc. (Tranfield et al.,
2003). The elaborations of selected themes in the PSM context (in
section 5.2. and Table 3) provide connections to contemporary PSM
literature (e.g., human resources, team leadership and organizational
support) and rest on this aggregation. Scholars should be aware of the
imperfect validity of organizational-level findings for the PSM team
level. Thus, our concluding framework (Fig. 4) comprises thematic as-
sociations rather than causal links, which interesting future PSM team
research will hopefully establish.
6. Conclusion
Studies have deemed politics (self-serving behavior and perceptions
Appendix B. Supplementary data
Supplementary data to this article can be found online at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pursup.2020.100608.
Appendix A. Additional suggestions for future research questions (FRQ)
Future Research Key concepts Possible research question
Questions
Personality & E- Individual personality, How does the deep-level composition
motions Team composition, POPs of PSM teams affect POPs and team
effectiveness?
Diversity Political behavior, diversity Do surface- and deep level faultlines
faultlines, virtual teams, interfere to increase politics in vir-
tual PSM teams?
Justice & Trust Trust-building mechanisms, How do the emergence and main-
endurance of integration, tenance of trust depend on the dif-
political behavior ferent modes of integration?
Organizational OCB as advantage-gaining How does integration endurance af-
Citizenship mechanism, POPs, endur- fect the POPs-OCB link in cross-
Behavior (- ance of integration functional teams?
OCB)
Journal of Purchasing and Supply Management 26 (2020) 100608
of such) as important challenge of cross-functional PSM teams
(Marshall et al., 2015; Moses and Åhlström, 2008; Stanczyk et al.,
2015). Our study assesses the current state of the emerging PSM politics
literature and identifies a significant research gap around political
teams in PSM. In order to create a solid base for future inquiry of this
empirical void, we review findings published in multi-level general
management literature on politics and make it accessible to the scho-
larly PSM and logistics community. We motivate whether and how re-
searchers should focus on “politicking” in organizational buying (Sheth,
1973) and move research on politics in PSM teams forward. Central
advice is to (1) engage into research on political PSM teams with strong
emphasis on context, (2) conceptually and instrumentally differentiate
their work from the established stream of individual-level effects of
politics, and (3) apply behavioral theories where “classical” PSM con-
cepts may reach their theoretical and predictive boundaries. Further-
more, we derive a framework of future research on political PSM teams
through elaboration of themes identified in a systematic review of
general management findings on multi-level politics (Fig. 4). As a re-
sult, we formulate future research questions (see Table 3 and Appendix
A) at the interface of the PSM and “general management” in line with
PSM's inter-disciplinary identity (Wynstra et al., 2019). The central
contribution of this study is a more nuanced picture of politics in PSM
that allows developing and testing PSM middle-range theory in spe-
cialized PSM applications (Garver, 2019). In closing, with the here
presented findings, our hope is to spark more intensive PSM politics
research that contributes to solving the challenges arising from PSM's
cross-functional nature.
CRediT authorship contribution statement
Henrik Franke: Conceptualization, Methodology, Formal analysis,
Investigation, Data curation, Writing - original draft, Writing - review &
editing, Visualization, Supervision. Kai Foerstl: Conceptualization,
Validation, Formal analysis, Investigation, Resources, Writing - original
draft, Writing - review & editing, Visualization, Supervision.
Declaration of competing interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial
interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influ-
ence the work reported in this paper.
Example(s) Concept to achieve embedded-
ness in PSM realm
Diverse personalities may lead to mutual awareness while Functional diversity in PSM
similar personalities may be perceived as competitors, re- teams (Huckman and Staats,
sulting in increasing POPs 2011; Huckman et al., 2009)
Global manufacturing teams characterized with diverse sur- Dispersion of SCM operations
face (ethnic) and deep (culture) level employees which may (Ellram et al., 2013; Foerstl
affect their political behavior et al., 2016b)
Embedded interfaces may be highly dependent on justice and Key drivers of cross-functional
trust while task-based integration may be more transactional integration for PSM tasks and
and require less personal facilitation processes (Pagell, 2004)
Permanent, embedded teams may show more robust OCB OCB and fairness at cross-func-
under increasing POPs whereas task-based teams reduce tional interfaces (Qiu et al.,
philanthropic efforts in response to POPs 2009; Wong et al., 2009)
11
H. Franke and K. Foerstl
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