The cultural embeddedness of professional service purchasing—A comparative study of German and Swedish companies

Research on professional service purchasing generally takes a culturally universalistic approach, implicitly assuming the generalizability of research findings and normative models to different cultural contexts. However, research in related disciplines points to the influence of national culture on managers' decisions, thereby questioning the culturally universalistic approach. The purpose of this paper is to explore differences in professional service purchasing in different cultural contexts. Based on a survey of large organizations, we analyze how the purchasing process for a specific type of professional services - management consulting services - is organized in two cultural contexts (i.e. Germany and Sweden). The results indicate that organizations in Germany and Sweden differ in the way they approach key aspects of the purchasing process. These differences are discussed in relation to two central cultural dimensions - uncertainty avoidance and masculinity-femininity - in which Germany and Sweden take very different positions. It is proposed that uncertainty avoidance mainly influences the first steps in the purchasing process (specify, select and contract) whereas masculinity-femininity mainly influences the remaining steps (order, expedite and evaluate). The paper contributes to the purchasing and supply management literature by empirically illustrating differences in purchasing practices in different cultural contexts and developing theory-driven propositions for the influence of national culture on the professional service purchasing process.