Embedded Influence Patterns in Organizational Buying Systems

Abstract

The organizational buying system concept is introduced as an organizing framework for exploring the patterned, repeated interactions that characterize ongoing purchasing processes. Applying a structural perspective to the study of influence, the authors assert that organizational actors derive influence from the position they occupy within the buying system. An analysis of a 171-member organizational network demonstrates that individual influence in organizational buying is derived from properties of both the formal and the informal structures.