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

(2006), agility concerns an organisation’s ability to master a turbulent market as well as its correspondingly volatile effect on customer demand. Additionally, Eckstein et al. (2015) support the latter view on agility by stating that it is about the company’s capability to sense short-term, temporary changes in the business environment in order to rapidly cater for such disturbances. In essence, agility has been introduced by papers as a tool to meet buyer value through quick response, which has been represented as a compulsory requirement for organisations, operating in a global supply chain (Yusuf, et al., 1999; Feizabadi, et al., 2019). In recent time, it has been identified that agile organisations can strategically leverage time more competitively due to their capability of responding to unique customer needs (Gligor, et al., 2013; Tang, et al., 2015). However, such agile competitiveness is only accessible once a network of transparency and win-win relationships are established, in which the pursuit is collaborative effectiveness (Nicoletti, 2018). If one takes a step back from the horizontal view towards agility, everything comes down to one’s ability of being resilient (Wieland & Wallenburg, 2013). By investing in either agility or robustness, Wieland and Wallenburg (2013) argue that enhanced resilience will positively affect a supply chain’s output of customer value. Additionally, an organisation is recognised as resilient if it is able to stabilise the original situation or create a new stable situation. As stated by Chakravarthy (1982), an organisation needs to either utilise a reactive or proactive strategy in order to develop its resilience. While a reactive strategy caters for environmental changes with a corporate action, a proactive strategy prevents changes through forecasting and prediction (Lengnick-Hall & Beck, 2005). As such, the reactive strategy is also known as being ‘agile’ through visibility and speed, whereas the proactive strategy is known as ‘robustness’ through anticipation and preparedness (Wieland & Wallenburg, 2013). Overall, these two branches form the conceptualisation of resilience (Shukla et al., 2011; Braunscheidel & Suresh, 2009). Moreover, irrespective of the dimension of resilience that an organisation pursues, the importance of communication and cooperation in the value system cannot be neglected, as both have an encouraging impact on one’s ability to act resiliently and meet buyer value (Wieland & Wallenburg, 2013). Therefore, it is vital that global organisations prioritise building and investing relationally in their linkages with supply chain partnerships to become more competitive and resilient to changing customer values and volatile markets (Min, et al., 2019). Essentially, through holistic communication and value-chain thinking, the aim is to coordinate processes and information harmoniously across the supply chain in order to cope with unforeseen events, thus, cooperating for mutual gain (Flynn, et al., 2010). Consequently, it becomes evident how one’s capacity of resilience should be viewed as a contributory value factor in modern supply-chain execution. V. D iscussion According to Abdelhadi (2017), the rising attention towards procurement has resulted in companies having to commence utilising procurement more strategically as a competitive source. In addition, companies have been urged to evolve and prepare themselves for a ‘new normal’ by developing resilience strategies into the value system, since uncertainties are anticipated to happen with greater frequency (Chakravarthy, 1982; Lengnick-Hall & Beck, 2005; Wieland & Wallenburg, 2013; Thalbauer, 2020). Hence, organisations ought to redefine their traditional Time for Revitalisation of Value Chain Management: A Reassessment of Porter’s View on Procurement 7 Global Journal of Management and Business Research Volume XXII Issue VII Version I Year 2022 ( ) A © 2022 Global Journals Across the last years, the procurement function, and its linkage to work as a means to resiliently respond to uncertainties, has received a vast majority of attention due to companies’ minor ability to master volatile market conditions (Abdelhadi, 2017; Georgino, et al., 2021). Unforeseen events have disrupted supply chains in various industries, which have shed light on how vulnerable contemporary global supply chains have been to such occurrences (Thalbauer, 2020; Elenjickal, 2021). Initially, it is stated that this paper seeks to continue the work of Abdelhadi (2017) by scrutinising whether the procurement function can be reconsidered as a primary activity in Porter’s (1985) value chain. However, the last years’ occurrences of supply chain disruption have also been taken into account. Abdelhadi (2017) concluded that procurement could not be regarded as a primary value adding activity. Based on the literature review, this author would initially agree with Abdelhadi (2017) if one’s overall decision is built upon the conceptualisation of procurement alone. It has been identified that procurement does not only concern sourcing of raw components to produce a product, it is also responsible for the activity of sourcing other elements, such as procuring machines for the plant, offices supplies, and consultancy services (Porter, 1985; Rejeb, et al., 2018). Therefore, it becomes clear how the whole procurement function cannot be placed as a primary activity, as all of the function’s responsibilities do not solely contribute with adding value to the production of the product. Nevertheless, it has been identified that there are similarities between the primarily activity, inbound logistics, and the secondary activity, procurement (Porter, 1985; Ellram & Birou, 1995; Büchi, et al., 2020; Georgino, et al., 2021). For this reason, it has been brought to attention that if fragments of the two activities are suitably unified, it cannot be neglected that this might entail a more contemporary, upstream primary activity to cater for changing buyer value and uncertainties (Wieland & Wallenburg, 2013; Gligor, et al., 2020).