It depresses me just thinking about it. But there's another side of me--a shopper who longs for a great deal that is consummated quickly and cleanly. Armed with the right information, be it dealer invoice and holdback on a new car or competitive mail-order pricing for a new stereo, I feel a great sense of satisfaction in acquiring the right product for the right price. And while many tasks compete for an IT manager's attention, making the right buy is an important part of the job. Whether you call it supply-chain management, capital-asset procurement or just common-sense purchasing, we all want to acquire the right software, hardware or services at the best possible price. Interestingly enough, the same commercial dynamic that makes it easy for me to purchase The Art of Tying Flies at an online bookshop at 40 percent off list price with overnight delivery holds great promise for liberating the IT manager from the agony of traditional organizational procurement procedures. E-commerce is not just something that IT managers enable on the supply side by deploying appropriate technology. We're also involved from the demand side, where the technology is well poised to make our lives a little easier. But don't go too fast....

Who, Me? Corrupt? While organizational theorists and advocates of business revitalization love to rattle off the many benefits of virtual organizations and nontraditional authority structures, a sober view of reality suggests that things haven't changed a whole lot in the past hundred or so years when it comes to the way we organize people and processes. While it is undoubtedly true that information technology has acted as a sort of ammunition for a bureaucracy-busting insurgency, the traditional hierarchical structures that guided organizational decision-making at the dawn of the industrial age are alive and kicking today. So, too, are the antiquated purchasing practices that are central to maintaining the hierarchy.

The corporate purchaser, as we all know, is there to help you. By centralizing procurement processes, the troika of product expertise, volume acquisition and economies of scale can be brought to bear in search of the best deal. Never mind the fact that the system also slows you down and often forces you to consider alternatives that make little sense. The hidden message is that you can't be trusted to make these decisions on your own--someone needs to keep an eye on you.

Of course, there is some merit to this arrangement. After all, corruption in purchasing has a rich tradition in many types of organizations, from government to the Fortune 100. As far back as you can search, countless managers have awarded business to their "friends," often ignoring the best interests of their employers and employees, and sometimes reaping personal financial gain under the table in the process. Centralizing purchasing authority is one method of trying to weed out such arrangements.

So why would senior management think that things are any different today? On one hand, it would be quite a stretch to argue that we're witnessing a positive transformation of personal ethics. There are still crooks among us who would hesitate only a few moments, if at all, if presented with the opportunity to pad their mutual-fund accounts by steering business one way or another. On the other hand, the very technology that allows us to conduct our business online has the potential to hold decision-makers accountable for their actions.