Abstract
Many manufacturing firms are expanding their plants to explore global markets and facing significant challenges for managing increasingly complex global operations. In recent years, Multinational Corporations （MNCs） are rapidly increasing procurement in Asian countries. In particular, as the manufacturing technology of suppliers in
China has made rapid progress and the supply base has been well developed, the number of MNCs that set up International Procurement/Purchasing Office （IPO） for doing global sourcing in China is increasing. The aim of this paper is to discuss the development and evaluation of IPO. We clarify the IPO deployment process and the evolution of its roles, to discuss the roles played by an IPO at different process of evolution and the change of roles over time, and also to consider factors of the evolution. We find that the roles of the IPO are increased gradually while involving proactively collaboration and interaction with headquarter and foreign subsidiaries. We also find that the IPO creates collaboration and interaction between Chinese suppliers and foreign subsidiaries to plan and develop new products together in order to expand the procurement in China. Finally, we show it is important to build a network between its parent company and foreign subsidiaries activities by advancing the cultivation of human resources.
