“ Technical Consultants and Organisational Learning in IT Purchase Situations

Though it is widely acknowledged that both organisational learning and the purchasing of IT products are important areas for study, it is surprising to find that very little research has explicitly linked these two areas together. As a result, the key reason for undertaking this research is to begin to address this gap in the literature by developing a model which is based on a review of the extensive literature on organisational buying behaviour, organisational information search, and organisational learning. In addition, a key contribution of this research is to model the effects that outside IT consultants are likely to have on the processes of information search and organisational learning in firms purchasing this type of product.