Supplier selection and assessment by university procurement offcers

Supplier selection and assessment is at the core of the procurement process. This study investigates how procurement officers in Israel's universities select and assess their suppliers. The authors explore which information channels officers use to assess suppliers and find that incidental and informal information sources are the most frequently used followed by official sources. The authors examine the criteria used by officers to select suppliers and identify quality and price as significantly more important than most other criteria. Finally, the authors do not find strong evidence that officers categorize suppliers to key and non-key suppliers according to the university's goals.