Cooperative purchasing within the United Nations

Abstract

To support cooperative purchasing within the United Nations we carried out an empirical study in 2004, mainly to define cooperation forms, and to identify and rank motives and critical factors for cooperation. Important reasons to work together turn out to be lower prices and transaction costs, sharing information, and learning. Reasons not to work together are i.e. lack of opportunity or priority to purchase cooperatively. Most of the literature in the area of critical factors focuses on factors such as trust and support. Based on our study, we also emphasize the importance of choosing the right products and services. Furthermore, we observe what we call the hitchhikers’ dilemma. This dilemma deals with small agencies hitchhiking on contracts from large agencies. For large agen-cies there may be no incentive to allow hitchhiking. For small agencies hitchhiking can be very interesting though. Possible solutions to this problem are savings allocation mechanisms. The paper concludes with suggestions for further research.