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Research has shown the potential contribution of properly managed suppliers to the competitive position of firms. Major strategy schools of thought such as the industry view and the resource-based view have evolved in their perspective about supplier’s contributions, replacing a transactional perspective of supplier management with a more comprehensive view of their role in corporate strategy. This study aims to understand if procurement professionals have evolved in the same direction.

During a corporate wide assessment for a large consumer product corporation, the author had the opportunity to incorporate a four-statement question aimed at identifying the perception of value creation by different levels of procurement staff. The answers were compared with responses of a reference group that comprised business school students who had never been exposed to professional procurement as a function or skill.

The results show that buyers, even at senior levels, more clearly identify value as the result of price negotiation, a functional perspective, than as the construction of sustainable competitive advantages, the shareholder perspective. They do not discriminate sufficiently between short-term transactional value transfer and long-term shareholder value capture.

The study was conducted on a sample of 500 people from four continents but limited to a single corporate environment. This study focused on innovation as a source of value and competitive advantages.

The paper shows to corporate deciders the impact of overly cost-focused procurement departments. This study reinforces their need to better balance the objectives assigned to their procurement team. This study outlines the steps necessary to align the cultural competitiveness of procurement to the objectives of the firm, with an extended enterprise scope.

Implementations of inter-organizational networks are common, following a growing diversity of cooperative modes between the independent companies associated in these networks.

Their scientific analysis has recently intensified, attention to network structures obviously including the study of the way their performance can be measured. Although academic research has mostly dealt with the performance of the network’s members, the concern of this article is rather with the performance of the global network.

Among the numerous forms of existing inter-organizational networks, maritime port communities are complex organizations which have to deal with operational synchronization, strategic cohesiveness and global performance measurement problems.

This article therefore mainly describes a port performance measurement system (PPMS): built in a predominantly empirical research context, the performance model and the associated measurement indicators illustrate the kind of network-level dedicated, performance control systems, on which port communities need to rely when designing their global strategy.

This paper aims to review and synthesise the recent advancements in the business model literature and explore how firms approach business model innovation.

A systematic review of business model innovation literature was carried out by analysing 219 papers published between 2010 and 2016.

Evidence reviewed suggests that rather than taking either an evolutionary process of continuous revision, adaptation and fine-tuning of the existing business model or a revolutionary process of replacing the existing business model, firms can explore alternative business models through experimentation, open and disruptive innovations. It was also found that changing business models encompasses modifying a single element, altering multiple elements simultaneously, and/or changing the interactions between elements in four areas of innovation: value proposition, operational value, human capital and financial value.

The conflicting approaches exist in the literature on how firms change their business models, this review synthesises these approaches and provide a clear guidance as to the ways through which business model innovation can be undertaken.

This paper aims to review and synthesise the recent advancements in the business model literature and explore how firms approach business model innovation.

A systematic review of business model innovation literature was carried out by analysing 219 papers published between 2010 and 2016.

Evidence reviewed suggests that rather than taking either an evolutionary process of continuous revision, adaptation and fine-tuning of the existing business model, or a revolutionary process of replacing the existing business model, firms can explore alternative business models through experimentation, open and disruptive innovations. It was also found that changing business models encompasses modifying a single element, altering multiple elements simultaneously, and/or changing the interactions between elements in four areas of innovation: value proposition, operational value, human capital and financial value.

Although this review highlights the different avenues to business model innovation, the mechanisms by which firms can change their business models and the external factors associated with such change remain unexplored.

The business model innovation framework can be used by practitioners as a “navigation map” to determine where and how to change their business models.

Because conflicting approaches exist in the literature on how firms change their business models, this review synthesises these approaches and provide a clear guidance as to the ways through which business model innovation can be undertaken.