Global Journal of Management and Business Research, A: Administration and Management, Volume 22 Issue 7

Nonetheless, in order to understand how value activities can support organisations mitigating their exposure to such uncertainties, it is assessed pivotal to initially comprehend the elements of Porter’s (1985) value chain. By utilising the value chain as a starting point, the aim is to unravel the central concepts of value chain management by Porter with the intention of exploring whether its elements, herein procurement, have adapted to a changing business environment. III. R esearch D esign As explained in the introduction, the purpose of this paper is to assess as whether it is feasible to reconsider the procurement function as a primary activity in Porter’s (1985) value chain, with a view to the last year’s occurrences of supply chain disruption. The next section describes the research design to this purpose. In the commencing process of data collection, the author utilised EBSCOhost’s research database, the Royal Danish Library, and additional online sources to access journals, where the following keywords were used: value chain, competitive advantage, procurement, COVID-19, and Suez Canal blockage. A central output of the search was Abdelhadi’s (2017) research paper, which, on a par with the problem statement of this paper, questions procurement’s function in the value chain. However, it becomes apparent how the paper of Abdelhadi (2017) does not take the notion of supply chain disruption or responsiveness into consideration. Additionally, it is assessed a more thorough explanation is needed to understand Abdelhadi’s (2017) conclusion of not considering the procurement function as a primary activity. Subsequently, the insightful research results gave incentives to add additional relevant keywords to the author’s process of gathering data. These keywords were: inbound logistics, buyer value, procurement logistics, and agility. Based on the nine keywords, the author identified 63 relevant sources for the purpose of answering the research question, which have furthermore helped in developing a literature review with the aim of reassessing the value chain and its elements. IV. L iterature R eview The purpose of this section is to unravel the central concepts of value chain management by Porter, and further understand whether the view on the procurement function is still rightful placed as a secondary activity. Furthermore, the intention is to scrutinise as to whether the expectation of value and the notion of procurement have adapted to the current reality of a changing business environment. a) The Value Chain According to Porter (1985), an organisation’s competitiveness cannot be understood by assessing it as a whole. Instead, one’s assessment should be conducted more systematically across the performance and behaviour in terms of costs and differentiation. Fast forwarding to today, these value activities are still assessed as the fundamental pillars of the theoretical success of Porter’s (1985) value chain, which equals to the corporate chain that stretches from the upstream engagement with the supplier to the downstream relationship with the customer (Abdelhadi, 2017). In order to facilitate the analysis of a company’s competitiveness, Porter’s (1985) value chain splits activities into two overall categories: primary activities and support activities. While a primary activity constitutes to a direct contribution to the addition of value to the production of a product, a support activity has an indirect effect on the value of a product. This implies that the secondary activities provide the input and structure, which allow the primary activities to competitively excel (Kumar & Rajeev, 2016; Holsapple & Singh, 2001). As shown in Figure 1, the primary activities consist of inbound logistics, operations, outbound logistics, marketing and sales, and service. The activities that support these, support activities, are firm infrastructure, human resource management, technology development, and procurement (Abdelhadi, 2017). Overall, as stated by Brandenburger (2002), the success of Porter’s (1985) management framework can be explained twofold: firstly, it provides a distinctive picture of the essential activities within an organisation. Secondly, through the choice of limited competitive strategies, it gives the decision-maker a simplified view of his/her options to act. Time for Revitalisation of Value Chain Management: A Reassessment of Porter’s View on Procurement 3 Global Journal of Management and Business Research Volume XXII Issue VII Version I Year 2022 ( ) A © 2022 Global Journals organisation’s activities in order to comprehend its The author’s methodological research design can be defined as a secondary qualitative data analysis (Bryman & Bell, 2015), where knowledge about the present consequences of disruptive supply chains and the evolutionary view upon procurement have been gathered through secondary data. On this basis, the author has assembled information through usage of previously published and analysed data. In sum, the insights from academia are assessed as a fundamental pillar of this paper, to the purpose of evaluating the importance of procurement in the current 21st century. On one hand, it has been argued that the disadvantage of such data is that they are intended for other purposes. However, one the other hand, it can also be argued that such data are a useful resource because they provide the researcher with additional time to reflect on the data’s suitability to the research question (Saunders, et al., 2019).