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Ancarani, A. (2003). 'The impact of public firms commercialisation on purchasing management'. Journal of Public Procurement 3(3): 357.
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Purchasing management has been recently focused by public organizations aiming to maximize its contribution to operations. Such an aspect has been emphasized by the impacts of on going commercialization process in the network public service sector. This paper provides evidence of changes in purchasing management behavior in public firms in the water supply sector. In particular, in Italy the firms, after a first phase of increasing attention to purchasing management and suppliers selection, slowly has come back to a clerical approach, maintaining an "arms-length" relationship with suppliers. A model for describing the oscillation of purchasing management within the firms is presented and an explanation of such an oscillation is suggested in terms of flow of power between technical management and political managers.