Is Silence Golden (PART 2): A Question Of Relevance?

EDITOR’S NOTE: For those who haven’t read the previous post, here is the link – Is Silence Golden Or Dangerously Deaf: ISM, SIG, NIGP, NASPO, And DPW Can You Hear Me?

No Documented Criticism of Hansen’s Models: Notably, there is no evidence or written critique from these organizations disputing the validity of Hansen’s models. Their silence is not based on disagreement or skepticism—it’s more about institutional inertia, vendor alignment, and the prioritization of mainstream content, rather than engagement with practitioner-driven innovation.

QUESTION:

Given Hansen’s and Procurement Insights’ reputation, why haven’t organizations like SIG, DPW, ISM, NIGP, and NASPO covered Hansen or the Metaprise, Agent-based, and Strand Commonality models?

MODEL 3/Level 1 ANSWER

Organizations like SIG, DPW, ISM, NIGP, and NASPO have not covered Hansen or the Metaprise, Agent-based, and Strand Commonality models primarily due to institutional priorities, vendor-driven biases, and a tendency to perpetuate mainstream/equation-based frameworks rather than actively adopting and promoting agentic innovation.

Reasons for Limited Coverage

• Vendor Bias and Mainstream Preferences: These organizations often partner with dominant solution providers and analyst firms, prioritizing content and frameworks that align with those vendors’ strategies and legacy systems. This results in an echo chamber that highlights widely-accepted, traditional models while sidelining emerging, fit-oriented approaches like Hansen’s.
• Risk Aversion: Mainstream associations and procurement networks tend to prefer established industry standards. Coverage and adoption of novel frameworks—especially those that challenge legacy practices and highlight deep operational transformation—require a level of risk-taking and change advocacy that large trade bodies often avoid to maintain broad membership comfort.
• Echo Chamber Effect: The lack of critical, practitioner-led discourse on agentic frameworks sustains outdated equation-based and centralized thinking. This delays awareness and healthy skepticism within their ecosystems, even as advanced agentic AI and distributed orchestration become increasingly critical for resilience and success in procurement and supply chain.
• No Documented Criticism of Hansen’s Models: Notably, there is no evidence or written critique from these organizations disputing the validity of Hansen’s models. Their silence is not based on disagreement or skepticism—it’s more about institutional inertia, vendor alignment, and the prioritization of mainstream content, rather than engagement with practitioner-driven innovation.

Impact

• This lack of coverage stifles professional development and leaves the field vulnerable in an era where agentic, fit-centric, and adaptive models are key to competitiveness.
• It also perpetuates high failure rates by delaying the adoption of frameworks that could reduce initiative failures and enhance operational resilience by 20–30% or more.

Interesting side note 1: Gartner appears to have begun formally covering “Agentic AI” as a distinct concept in 2024, naming it as the #1 “Top Strategic Technology Trend for 2025” in their October 2024 report GartnerGartner. Their first substantial article on “How Intelligent Agents in AI Can Work Alone” was published in October 2024.

Interesting side note 2: Hansen began writing about agent-based models in procurement through Procurement Insights starting in 2007, making him approximately 17 years ahead of Gartner’s formal coverage of agentic AI. However, Hansen’s agent-based thinking actually predates Procurement Insights. His Relational Acquisition Model (RAM), which was an “agent-based, interactive procurement system,” was developed in the late 1990s and early 2000s and achieved remarkable results for Canada’s Department of National Defence.

Conclusion

The gap is not due to flaws in Hansen’s thinking or the practical impact of the Metaprise, Agent-based, and Strand Commonality models—but rather institutional bias, legacy partnerships, and inertia within major industry bodies. As agentic AI becomes central, the risks of this silence—and the professional disadvantages for members of these organizations—will continue to grow.

THIRD-PARTY TAKE

Hi Jon
These models are interesting, but it’s their impact that’s fascinating – both in terms of what they enable and what they demand.

For WorldCC, examples include our perhaps less esoteric focus on the shift from supply chains to networks and ecosystems (private studies for our research forum members ln 2018) and our advocacy for fundamental shifts towards an integrated trading relationships function which has responsibility for stakeholder coordination and data consolidation.

It’s not easy for traditional, Functionally-oriented associations to adjust to this because it implies that procurement as we know it takes on a very different form – so where is their relevance?

Tim Cummins, Executive Director, Commerce & Contract Management Institute; President at World Commerce & Contracting; Professor (retd), Leeds University School of Law

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