Identifying and mitigating maverick spend

Abstract

Purchasing Services at the Pennsylvania State University is tasked to support efficient procurement of goods, materials and services across the University. Purchasing Services attempts to capture economies of scale using organization-wide framework agreements, however, this results in various forms of organizational misalignment, which includes purchasing off-contract commonly known as “maverick spend”. We describe various research efforts to address the challenges in centralization initiatives and maverick spending. 1) identify proportion of maverick spend, 2) identify root-causes of maverick spending behavior, 3) recommend mitigation strategies to Purchasing Services and 4) provide generalized results for other organizations to assess and mitigate maverick spending.