Scientific maturity of purchasing management research: a rapidly growing puppy that still has to learn some manners

The field of purchasing management (PM) is still young. In this paper we investigate the status of PM research by looking at the historical development of other research fields that have already matured. For this investigation we categorise scientific research as (1) either deductive (theoretical) or inductive (empirical) and (2) either quantitative (formal) or qualitative. It appears that all mature management research fields include both types of research. Furthermore, we find that in PM the focus has mainly been on empirical research and some qualitative deductive research until now. We conclude that in PM research there is a lack of attention for quantitative deductive research.