Creating an international purchasing office (IPO) is one of the most frequently adopted solutions by companies to manage their international sourcing activities. Despite the increasing importance of this solution for international supply management, the literature still offers limited studies on it.
This research, which forms part of an EU project entitled ‘International sourcing Strategies for China’, tries to fill this gap. Starting from an analysis and systematisation of the existing literature, the study defines the main aspects characterising the creation and management of
IPOs in China, which is actually one of the nations with the highest inflow of foreign direct investments and one of the most important sourcing basins in the world. In particular, taking into consideration the specificities of the Chinese normative/social/political context, the research tries to describe how to establish and manage an IPO in China and the main functions assigned to it.
