IPSERA Annual Meeting 2018
From 25-28 March 2018, the annual meeting of IPSERA (International Purchasing and Supply Education and Research Association) took place, with almost 200 participants from across the globe. This year’s 27th edition took place in Athens where the subject of Fostering Innovation was addressed. This theme was selected because of the increasing importance of innovation within the area of Purchasing and Supply Management. During the conference 148 papers were discussed which consist of competitive papers, working papers and practitioner papers. These mainly focused on innovation, however besides this topic, also numerous other important topics within the field were discussed.
In order to organize a conference of this size, there is a significant program committee required. This year Finn Wynstra and Erik van Raaij represented the Purchasing and Supply Management group in the program committee. Erik and Finn were also privileged to hand out the Live Time Achievement awards and the winner of the NEVI Best Healthcare Paper Award. The Live Time Achievement Award went to Arjan van Weele and to Jan Telgen. They were honoured for their ‘’special contributions to the development of purchasing as a scientific discipline’’. The NEVI Best Healthcare Paper Award went to the ‘’Let and forget: a dilemmas perspective on contract governance in healthcare procurement’’ written by Laura Menzies, Joanne Meehan and Nicola Harris from the University of Liverpool. This paper addressed the issue of the lack of contract management in healthcare procurement by taking the perspective of decision dilemmas.
The next IPSERA congress will be from the 14th to the 18th of April 2019 and this will be held in the exciting city of Milan, Italy. This edition will combine art and science, just as Leonardo da Vinci did, but then especially focused on the art and science of procurement. For information on the upcoming IPSERA congress, visit the website: http://www.ipsera2019.com/
