Procurement strategy formation: (re )designing rail infrastructure project alliances
Purpose The purpose of this paper is to provide insights into the reasoning behind the development of new procurement approaches by public sector clients. Design/methodology/approach A case study approach focuses on a procurement development process by a public sector client. It investigates the reasoning behind various applications of the project alliancing concept in rail infrastructure projects over a period of 15 years. Alliancing applications are singled out and mapped against a number of criteria derived from literature on alliancing. The reasoning behind these applications and their differences are reconstructed from contextual documentation. Theories and concepts from the fields of strategic management and knowledge management literature are used to analyse the results. Findings The development process seems to be evolutionary rather than deliberately planned. The uncovered variations in alliancing applications can only to a very limited extent be explained by the reconstructed reasoning. Th.