Public and healthcare organizations play a vital role in addressing grand challenges, including environmental degradation, growing resource scarcity, rising inequality, and the covid-19 pandemic. For this, they rely significantly on suppliers. Buying organizations need dynamic, innovative, and competitive factor (supplier) markets. However they often have to contend with concentrated markets associated with reducing efficiency, unfair trading practices, and stifled innovation.

In coping with such market conditions, effective supply systems cannot depend only on regulators’ policies and vendors’ competitive strategies. Effective purchasing behaviours are also crucial. In the longer term, organizations need to be able to influence supply market dynamics in favor of innovation, sustainability, resilience, and market diversity and competitiveness. This capability is ‘market stewardship’ – a new field of research in procurement!

We are recruiting a highly motivated PhD candidate to take forward this novel area of research, following a design science approach. Working with a multidisciplinary team with procurement, competition law, and system dynamics, the project will include:

• Scoping the problem - mapping the consequences of market concentration on public/health procurement
• Modelling market evolution – explaining how and why markets become concentrated
• Investigating the boundaries of market diversity – exploring the opportunities and goals of market stewardship
• Designing the role – characterising effective market stewarding, and the key organizational capabilities should such a steward as an organization have?

• An M.Sc. degree in Business Administration, Public Administration, Economics, Commercial Law, Industrial Engineering & Management, or related field
• Highly proficient in written and oral English
• Ability and passion for operating at the intersection of various fields
• A high degree of responsibility and independence, and the ability to collaborate with other researchers and colleagues outside the university environment
• Skills for systems dynamics modelling, or an ability to learn sufficiently to collaborate well with specialist colleagues in the BMS Lab

The UT provides a dynamic and international environment, combining the benefits of academic research with a topic of high relevance to public and health administration, excellent working conditions, a stimulating scientific environment, and a green and friendly campus. We offer:

• A personal development program within the Twente Graduate School, combined with excellent mentorship
• A gross monthly salary of € 2,395 in the first year, growing each year up to € 3,061 in the fourth year
• A holiday allowance of 8% of the gross annual salary, and a year-end bonus of 8.3%
• A minimum of 29 holidays per year in case of full-time employment;
• Full status as an employee at the UT, including pension and health care benefits

The HBE cluster is a growing research group that holds a leading position at the interfaces of business, technology and the social sciences. We conduct cross-disciplinary business research, supporting organizations in innovative and entrepreneurial management and decision-making.

At HBE, we seek to provide an encouraging and inclusive working culture. Our aim is that all job applicants are given equal opportunities; we select candidates based on their aptitude and ability. To promote workforce diversity, we are open to offering flexible working conditions on an individual basis to support work-life balance, which may include adjusting contract of employment, working hours and location, or child care arrangements.