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Collaborative procurement is increasingly on the policy agenda in many countries, yet problems with collaboration occur. This article adopts a relational theory perspective to explore the enablers of and barriers to collaboration in purchasing, helping identify success factors. The authors adopted a mixed qualitative/quantitative methodology and interviewed 51 senior staffers in the United Kingdom. They found that collaborative public procurement is hindered by local politics and differing priorities, supplier resistance, reliance on suppliers for data, and a lack of common coding systems. Enabling factors for collaborating with local governments include dealing with local issues and buying from small and medium‐sized enterprises. For health care providers, important themes are product innovation and ensuring supply. The authors develop a list of enabling factors and show their effect on collaboration success. This may assist policy makers in identifying areas of guidance and help practitioners prevent problems in collaboration.

Increasingly, public sector organizations collaborate to buy products and services. They collectively form purchasing groups to deliver more value for money. What is the progress of these small‐scale developments of public sector purchasing groups to date, in the early phases of their life cycle? Although previous research provides general descriptions of life‐cycle phases, little attention has been paid to detailed small‐scale developments that take place within each life‐cycle phase. As a result, little knowledge is available about small‐scale developments of purchasing groups. More insight is important in order to better understand how purchasing groups can develop over time from one life‐cycle phase into another. Three in‐depth case studies from different countries offer a unique comparative overview of small‐scale developments in these early life‐cycle phases for their five dimensions. Most small‐scale problems follow a predictable path, but the way in which the purchasing groups deal with such problems differs depending on the specific situation of the group.

In the Operations Management field, sustainable procurement has emerged as a way to green the purchasing and supply process. This paper explores issues in sustainable procurement training. The authors formed an interdisciplinary team to design, deliver and evaluate a training programme to promote and develop sustainable procurement in the United Kingdom health sector. Particular features of the project were its engagement with evolving and contested understandings of sustainable procurement and of the underlying concept of sustainable development and its recognition that relevant knowledge in the field is both incomplete and widely diffused through the procurement community. Eight practitioner groups worked together on themes to develop their understanding of sustainable procurement using the Blackboard virtual learning environment. Group interviews were conducted upon completion of the course and again three months later to explore qualitatively participants' experience of learning and implementing sustainable procurement. Although the course was delivered to practitioners, it might be modified for undergraduate and graduate students as it comprised the use of online activities in virtual learning environments, case studies and a broad range of literature. The course was also particularly significant in the context of contemporary policy moves in the United Kingdom and elsewhere to promote the role of higher education institutions in delivering workplace-based, high-skills education consistent with strategic policy considerations (see, for example, DIUS, 2008).

PurposeThe objective of this paper is to gain a better understanding of the impact of context on the adoption of e‐commerce in supply chains.Design/methodology/approachA literature review, 45 semi‐structured interviews in four different supply chains in the UK healthcare sector, involving 16 different organisations, and additional documentation is used in this study.FindingsThe adoption of e‐commerce in supply chains is simultaneously affected by two contextual meta‐variables: external pressure, which is influenced by supply chain structure, demand and industry characteristics; and internal readiness, which is influenced by IT, organisational and buying need characteristics. Different combinations of these two main variables lead to four different trade‐off situations affecting adoption or non‐adoption.Research limitations/implicationsThe empirical research has been undertaken in the specific context of the UK healthcare supply chains. It would be useful to test our findings in other sectors and countries.Practical implicationsThe paper helps to understand the contextual factors that affect e‐commerce adoption and concludes with a framework that differentiates four situations that can improve managers' and researchers' understanding of e‐commerce adoption in the future.Originality/valueThe contribution of this paper is the recognition that the adoption of e‐commerce is affected by factors in both an organisational and a supply chain context, which simultaneously lead to trade‐off decisions. Also, unlike most other studies which refer to supply chains and are limited to an organisational perspective or at most a dyadic perspective, this paper builds up a supply chain picture of context by including perspectives from multiple actors in a chain.