Editing Institute for Supply Management (section)

===World War I and the 1920s===
With the entry of the United States into World War I in 1917, NAPA offered its services to the war effort. Materials were in short supply and procurement had become more complicated as the U.S. government "attempted to guide economic activity via centralized price and production controls".<ref>{{cite web|title=The Economics of World War I|url=https://www.nber.org/digest/jan05/w10580.html|website=National Bureau of Economic Research|access-date=7 June 2017}}</ref> During this period NAPA members helped establish purchasing courses at New York University and Harvard. The association began developing professional standards including a code of ethics for the purchasing profession.

During World War I, NAPA called for the centralization of War Department purchasing to reduce inefficiency and graft.<ref>{{cite magazine |date= February 1918|title= Editorial  |magazine= The Purchaser |location= New York|publisher= The Purchasing Agent Company, Inc.}}</ref> The association advocated standardization in the purchase and use of coal and the prosecution of profiteers. Its crusade for ethical standards resulted in the ''Purchasing Agent’s Creed'' that observers hailed for decades as one of the outstanding moral statements in modern business.{{Cn|date=September 2024}} In 1928, it released the ''Standards for Buying and Selling'' with the recognition that buying and selling should be mutually profitable and that cooperation would reduce the cost of purchasing.