A maturity Assessment for Strategic and Sustainable Sourcing : A case study of a Swedish IT consultancy firm

Sammanfattning: In recent years, the purchasing volume, measured as the percentage of a company's total turnover, has grown substantially and the competition expands over supply chains and external parties. As a result of this, the process of procuring goods and services provides businesses with the opportunity to add value through efficient strategies, resulting in excellent control over the sourcing process. However, strategically enhancing and controlling procurement, addressed as the concept of strategic sourcing, is far more complex than one may think. Research indicates that organizations worldwide do not know how to direct this issue. Here, one way for organizations to increase their performance and control could be by strategically measuring the maturity level of the current state of the business structure and activities, directly and indirectly, connected to sourcing. Previous research has mainly focused on strategic sourcing by utilizing operational activities and examining each individual sourcing factor. Furthermore, as sourcing is evolving and becoming more strategically enhanced, the concept of sustainability in relation to business performance and sourcing have been neglected in previous research. Recent studies show that the view of sustainability as a key element for business performance and responsibility has drastically increased. Therefore, concepts of sustainability should be integrated into procuring processes and performance, adding a new dimension to the complexity of strategic sourcing. In addition, as previous research manages to identify different sourcing aspects important for strategic sourcing, it lacks to identify how to implement these to reach sustainable and strategic sourcing in regard to business performance. Therefore, the absence of strategic and sustainable relations within sourcing assessments in regard to organizational performance have been identified as the research gap. The purpose of this thesis project was to investigate and understand how organizations can strategically develop sustainable and efficient sourcing ability by identifying and understanding their sourcing needs and current level of sourcing maturity. Therefore, the aim of the report is to identify aspects that correlate to strategic and sustainable sourcing, as well as investigate how tools can be developed and used to evaluate an organization’s degree of maturity. In this study, a semi-systematic literature review has been conducted and used as the theoretical foundation. In combination with the theoretical foundation, empirical data originating from a case study with field-specific interviews focusing on an organization's ability to measure and establish the degree of maturity for strategic and sustainable sourcing. As a result of this study, it was found that there not only exist specific sourcing factors that define strategic sourcing but also, that these factors need synergies in order to fully create a strategic foundation. Together with all identified sourcing factors, 6 main categories were identified. These are, Processes, Strategy & Goals, Organization & Structure, Performance, IT & System support as well as Sustainability, all in relation to sourcing. Additionally, it was discovered that sustainability needs to be integrated into the entire sourcing organization in order to change the perception of sustainable sourcing and to have an impact on an organization's strategic ability. Moreover, it was discovered that an efficient way of developing strategic and sustainable sourcing was to measure its degree of maturity against these categories. The result presents a way to build such an assessment tool to move from a reactive stage to a more proactive state in order for organizations to reach their desired state in regard to their ability to conduct sustainable and strategic sourcing.