The Informing Needs of Procurement Officers in Israel
[This Proceedings paper was revised and published in Informing Science: the International Journal of an Emerging Transdiscipline (InfoSci)]
To develop and introduce a questionnaire that investigates the informing needs, information-seeking behavior, and supplier selection of procurement officers in Israel. The questionnaire’s internal consistency reliability is given. Additionally, we describe the demographic description of the procurement officers in Israel.
Procurement science is an important field that affects firms’ profits in the private sector and is significant to growth, innovation, sustainability, and welfare in the public sector. There is little research about the informing needs of procurement officers in general and particularly in Israel.
A quantitative questionnaire that is sent to all the procurement officers in Israel’s purchasing and logistics managers association.
The questionnaire that is developed in this paper may be used by other researchers and practitioners to evaluate the informing needs of procurement officers.
The typical procurement officer is male, with a bachelor degree and is digitally proficient.
The procuring side can use the questionnaire to develop better tools for obtaining information efficiently. The supplying side can use this knowledge to improve its exposure to potential customers and address its customer’s needs better.
The questionnaire can address theoretical questions such as how digital literacy affects the procurement process and provide empirical findings about active research areas such as supplier selection and information-seeking behavior.
Future research will examine the relationship between the various variables and demographic features to understand why specific informing needs and information-seeking behaviors arise.