ساختارهای سازمانی و عملکرد مدیریت زنجیره تامین

The objective of this paper is to suggest a set of best organization structures for efficient supply chain management. For this, this paper derives organization types for supply chain management according to the formalization and centralization level of an independent department responsible for supply chain management (SCM) activities, and hierarchical relationship in organizational position and operational responsibility between the SCM department and existing other functional departments. And then, this paper identifies organizational characteristics, which have significant influences on SCM performance by investigating the difference in performance across the proposed organization types. From the results of empirical test, this paper finds that even though too excessive formalization and centralization of the SCM department within a firm may interrupt complete SC integration and performance improvement, a certain range of control by the SCM department is inevitable to build the fundamentals of integrated supply chain management, and thus the temporary pursuit of intensive control focused organization type such as integrated line organization may be considered depending on firm characteristics and environmental change. However, the empirical results further indicate that in the long run, intermediate organization types such as Functional and Process Staff organization that the SCM department maintains an adequate level of balance and harmony with other functional departments while it controls, adjusts, and integrates various SCM activities effectively might be advisable. Yet, the study findings reveal that a more dynamic and extensive approach in reaching the best organization type for SCM performance is necessary.

Integrated supply chain management enables firms to identify the efficient inventory level while increasing inventory turnover by utilizing logistics database. Also, it increases logistics efficiency and flexibility through quality and productivity enhancement, efficient machine operations, and production space reduction (Kaeli, 1990). In addition, firms can have a stronger market position and greater customer satisfaction from better responsiveness to customers (Gross, 1984; Kaltwasser, 1990; Goldhar and Lei, 1991), and economies of scale from the best and stable relationship through long-term strategic alliances and networks with suppliers (Goldhar and Lei, 1991). Vaart and Donk (2004) address that the importance of shared resources is related to the stage of integration in a supply chain or network, thus supporting the above argument. Therefore, by establishing supply chain integration, firms obtain sustainable competitive advantage (Kaeli, 1990; Kaltwasser, 1990; LaLonde and Masters, 1990). Bowersox et al. (1992) argue the inevitable change of organizational structure in their discussion on the integration of supply chain. They insist that firms need to adopt new systems that cannot be observed in the traditional organization structure where independent functional areas such as production and marketing prevail, in order to shift to integrated supply chain management. This means that an independent department can be required to control and adjust more effectively supply chain activities. In other words, organization type which considers the role and status of independent department responsible for supply chain management (SCM) activities, should be clearly established. In this respect, it is very advisable that many firms recognizing the importance of supply chain management have begun adopting new organizational structure. However, it is not an easy task to present a single type of organization that is best suitable for supply chain management. This is because even if a firm decides the establishment of a new department for supply chain management, another decision on whether the new department is located in an independent place or incorporated into an appropriate existing department must be made. Also, in case of creating a new independent department, the determination on operational role and hierarchical relationship within organization between new SCM department and existing departments should be followed. And various industrial and environmental characteristics of each firm should be recognized. This difficulty makes the position of SCM department within an organization extremely precarious, which is a rarely seen phenomenon in production or sales departments because the independent and solid status of these departments does not change regardless of how a firm may be restructured. The objective of this paper is to test empirically the necessity and status of independent SCM department for efficient supply chain management. For this, first, this paper derives several organization types for supply chain management according to the formalization and centralization level of independent department responsible for supply chain management, and hierarchical relationship in organizational position and operational responsibility between SCM department and existing functional departments. And then, this paper identifies organizational characteristics which have significant influences on SCM performance by investigating the difference in performance among the proposed organizational types.

The purpose of this study is to draw organizational characteristics and suggest a set of best organization types for the effective operations of SCM and efficient SC integration. For this, this paper investigated the differences in the level of SC integration and technical/administrative SCM performance across several SCM organization types. This study adopted SCM organization types for classification from the literatures in a proactive manner. We conducted factor analysis, cluster analysis, and subsequently ANOVA to identify the reliability of the extracted SCM organization types. Through such systematic process, we confirmed the feasibility of each SCM organization type suggested in the literature. Therefore, SCM organization types adopted in this study have enhanced validity, providing a ground for further research. Also, this study provided empirical evidence of dynamic adoption of different organization types according to the level of SC integration, thus making valuable contributions. Traditionally, most Korean and Japanese firms have pursued a form of centralized organizational structure with hierarchical power-based leadership. Also, past organization type in most Korean and Japanese firms was not oriented to SCM function. That is, a limited number of traditional logistics activities were managed individually across the two or more business units including marketing and production without single independent SCM department, or executed within a limited scope by SCM department with limited delegation of power. However, currently, firms with highly formalized SCM department which autocratically makes decisions for delivery time, quality, price, risk sharing, and rewards like Toyota, Samsung Eletronics Co., and Hyundai Motor Co. have increased continuously. Thus, the sample data on various firms employing a wide spectrum of organizational structure from non SCM-oriented organization to integrated line organization this paper suggested might be gathered relatively easily. Accordingly, more extensive and meaningful results on organizational structure advisable for SC integration or performance improvement can be derived from Korean and Japanese sample data covering such wide spectrum of organizational structure. In such a reason, the results of this paper using Korean and Japanese data may be somewhat suggestive to practitioners or academicians. However, research setting with just Korean and Japanese firms is definitely insufficient to generalize the findings of this paper. Originally, in the process of preparing this study, there was an idea of analyzing the difference in the style of supply chain management between oriental countries and western countries. This can be a very interesting issue, because traditionally and generally it has been recognized that there might be a considerable differences in the management style and organizational structure between oriental countries and western countries, and thus analyzing how such difference can be reflected to the style of SCM is very helpful in suggesting a set of advisable global SCM strategies. Accordingly, comparative study with the western management styles of US and European firms would be helpful. Also, the necessity of the analysis on the differences between Korean firms and Japanese firms cannot be ignored. As mentioned in the sampling section, there is a significant difference between two countries for company size measured as sales and as assets. Even though this paper skipped due to the limited paper size, separate analyses for Korean firms and Japanese firms are needed to disclose the effect of such size difference and cultural difference between Korean firms and Japanese firms on supply chain management and organizational structure. This also deserves further research. Another interesting extension may involve the effect of the causal linkages among the aforementioned constructs on firm-level performance. This paper did not use firm-level performance measures such as financial and market performances in the perspective that it is advisable to select performance variables which can be influenced more directly by the feature of SCM organization. It will be very interesting to analyze the feature of causal relationships among more various SCM-related constructs and other environmental variables with firm performance and SCM performance. This will be very helpful in identifying the direct or indirect effect of various SCM activities and resources on firm performance. Additionally, this study has the following limitations. First, this study did not consider the influence of time aspect on the relationship between SCM organization types and SCM performance. That is, the duration of organization type a firm employs or transition from one to another organization type was not considered. As a result, it lacks empirical evidence for the influence of dynamic adoption of different organization types on SCM performance or the antecedents of new organization adoption. Second, there could be more types of SCM organization that may be identified by subdividing factors that determine SCM organization types. Future studies need to address this. Further, for the generalization of the model suggested in this research paper, the cross-validation process applying the model to new data and evaluating its goodness of fit has to be performed. For this, as mentioned previously, replication of the study described in this paper with a sample of US and European firms will be addressed in the future.