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On the Horizon
Emerald Article: Educational supply chain management: a case study
Antonio K.W. Lau
Article information:
To cite this document: Antonio K.W. Lau, (2007),"Educational supply chain management: a case study", On the Horizon, Vol. 15 Iss:
1 pp. 15 - 27
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http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/10748120710735239
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Educational supply chain management:
a case study
Antonio K.W. Lau
Abstract
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to implement the philosophy of supply chain management in the
current higher education environment so as to suggest innovative management ideas in higher
education management.
Design/methodology/approach – This paper conducted an in-depth case study approach in a
university. This study follows Yin’s approach to interview the personnel of a supply chain department and
collected the university documents.
Findings – The study identified three supply chains of the university, i.e. commodity, special requested
and outsourcing supply chains. Rearrangements of the existing supply chain are suggested to further
improve the efficiency and effectiveness of higher education.
Research limitations/implications – This research, which used a case study approach to examine a
university, affects the research generalization. This research, which qualitatively reviewed the supply
chain management in a university, failed to obtain objective instruments of the supply chainperformance
in the university.
Practical implications – Two innovative ideas for managing the supply chain in the higher education
environment are explored. The findings provide interesting and innovative ways for the manager in the
education section to review their works.
Originality/value – From an academic perspective, this research may be an innovative way to
implement the latest business management philosophy into the higher education environment. This
connects education management with general business management. From a managerial perspective,
this research provides education management a new way to understand how supply chain management
impacts on the performance of a university. It also identifies unanswered questions for further study.
Keywords Supply chain management, Education, Hong Kong
Paper type Case study
Introduction
During the last decade, researches on supply chain management have extensively
appeared in different types of management areas. Strategic management concerns about
strategic alliance, long term partnerships and organizational integration, while operations
management highlights inventory and material management, supply chain integration, and
outsourcing. Information management talks about e-commerce, enterprise resource
planning, customer relationship management and other computational applications of
supply chain management, whereas knowledge management studies knowledge sharing,
spillover and collaboration across supply chain. These literatures usually discuss the supply
chain issues in profit organizations for adding value or reducing cost in supply chain
partners; however, a few literatures relatively discuss them in nonprofit organization. Hay
(1990) characterizes that profit organization tends to make money while nonprofit
organization tends to place the money as minor objective. The money gained from
nonprofit organization would be used to balance the expenditure of the organization. That
may cause the management of profit organization to achieve the goal may be different from
DOI 10.1108/10748120710735239 VOL. 15 NO. 1 2007, pp. 15-27, QEmerald Group Publishing Limited, ISSN 1074-8121
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Antonio K.W. Lau is based
in the Department of
Manufacturing Engineering
and Engineering
Management, City
University of Hong Kong,
Kowloon Tong, Hong Kong,
China
non-profit organization. However, there is very little research on it. Firstenberg (1996) then
states that nonprofit organizations can be as well managed as enterprises formed solely to
make a profit. That means that management should be important for the non-profit
organization to perform their duty (Drucker, 1992), where management recently highlights
the criticalness of supply chain management to improve the business success (Steven,
1989; Mentzer, 2001).
This paper fills this gap by examining practices of supply chain management in a case of
City University of Hong Kong. There are two purposes. First, this study is to overview supply
chain management in the City University of Hong Kong. Second, three cases of distinctive
supply chains in the university are analyzed and thereby problems and improvement
opportunities can be explored and explained.
Research methodology
The above research questions were addressed via a case study approach suggested by
Yin(1994). First, the boundary of the case was properly defined to prevent irrelevant data
collection. This study only collected data in the area of supply chain management. The
purchasing and supply chain personnel were asked to provide, either personal or university,
information related to their supply chain management and their working relationship with
suppliers and internal customers. We also asked their customers (e.g. departmental users
and student) to discuss how they coordinate with supply chain departments.
Second, a single university is adopted as the unit of analysis to accurately specify the
research objectives. This single case design approach was used to critically review the
existing patterns of higher education and provide good opportunities for extensive analysis
within the single case study (Yin, 1994).
Third, Table I shows four validity tests used to judge the quality of the research works.
In addition, the interviews was conducted by 2 investigators, each of that wrote down the
information and re-checked with each other. The initial interview questionnaire was prepared
and sent to the interviewee before the interview (Appendix). Three distinctive supply chains
in the university are analyzed and developed, i.e. commodity, special requested and
outsourcing supply chains. Strategic supply chains are suggested for improvements of the
overall supply chain management in City University of Hong Kong.
Supply chain management overview
In this section, the overview of City University of Hong Kong and its supply chain
management is described with brief description of procurement process.
Table I Four validity tests used (Yin, 1994)
Tests Definitions Tactics being used
Construct validity Establishing correct operational measures for the
concepts
Multiple sources of evidence:
Public information, university documents, and personal
interviews with purchasing and supply chain managers,
departmental users, students
Internal validity Establishing causal relationship, whereby certain
conditions are shown to lead to other conditions, as
distinguished from spurious relationships
Pattern-matching:
Matching the similar pattern in the supply chain
management
Comparing the empirical data with literature review
External validity Establishing the domain to which a study’s findings can
be generalized
Replication logics from many supply chains within the
university
Reliability Demonstrating that the operations of a study can be
repeated with the same results
A case study protocol used in each project. A case
database being developed
Source: Yin, 1994
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City University of Hong Kong is one of seven nonprofit tertiary educational institutions in
Hong Kong. In 2001-2002, it has approximate 17,000 students and over 188 millions funding
sponsored from government and the private sector. However, the recent economic downturn
has impacted on City University of Hong Kong in the reduction of government subvention for
the current triennium 2001-2004, which the university’s operations rely on. Non-government
sources are also adversely affected. The donations and benefactions on research income
have been decreased also double from 2001 to 2002 (City University of Hong Kong Financial
report, 2001-2002). To maintain substantive academic achievement with limited resources,
cost-effectiveness is the goal that the education institution starts to work on. Supple chain
management as the mean to achieve the goal in the business field should be appropriate to
use in the academic one.
Different from many large business organizations, City University of Hong Kong has no
formal supply chain strategies placed publicly. The aims of supply chain management would
be suggested by interviewee as ‘‘value for money’’ and ‘‘accountability’’. Value for money is
to ensure that funding, both public and private, is used intelligently and productively.
Accountability is to promote cost-effectiveness in administrative and research area. That
means that, keeping academic quality, the university should manage supply chain
effectively with cost being an important factor.
To achieve the cost effectiveness, centralized supply chain management is used to
aggregate commodity supply chain, e.g. office stationary, toilet paper and other MRO items.
The supply chain management first forecast the quantity of the commodity that the university
required in the coming years through historical data. Second, they search on proper
suppliers in the market and ask for the tenders for the aggregate quantity of the commodity
from the suppliers. Because of the total volume of one-year supply is large, the bargaining
power of the university is bigger and the unit price of the supply is lower. In this way,
economical price of the commodity is the top priority and would be obtained. On the other
hand, clearance and security service are long-term deals that ensure the environmental and
safety health in the campus; therefore, long-term relationships with the suppliers are
managed with multiple priorities in the supply chain, i.e. flexibility, cost, quality.
Sometimes, supply chain would be made from some special requests by academic staffs.
This type of purchasing always correlates to highly expensive and high-technology goods, in
which supply chain department does not have this special technological knowledge to
evaluate the instrument alone. Therefore, the supply chain department would perform as the
role of purchasing agent to handle each request involved with the requisitionars, e.g.
specific research instruments and hi-tech machines. For example, Laser measurement
instruments could be very specific, highly expensive and high technological newness.
Purchasing this kind of goods requires dedicated process that not only the purchasing
department assess the product explicitly, but also the customer, who is probably the
specialist in operating the instrument, would be asked to involve in the purchasing process
for both the technological knowledge and the source of supply.
In all sense, supply chain managers tend to play an active role of purchasing activities to
fulfill the customer needs at a reasonable price, which targets at cost effectiveness. The
general supply chain for City University of Hong Kong has been shown (Figure 1). The
customers are internal customer, i.e. a student, a researcher, a professor, administrative staff
and so on, while external suppliers are other business organizations and internal suppliers
are university professors, who have specific technique requested by other internal
customers. Internal supply chain activities are the supply chain processes conducted by
supply chain department. The activities consist of ordering process, supplier selection
process, negotiation, supplier relationship etc.
General procurement process
Generally, the procurement process of City University of Hong Kong starts from PR received.
When the PR is received, purchasing agent check the expenditure authority in order to
ensure appropriate expenditure authority being obtained. If not, the purchasing agent would
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ask for the requester to obtain the authority. If yes, it checks the format of PR. Oracle is the
ERP system that the university used to handle PR electronically.
However, City University of Hong Kong purchases a large variety of products that serves
different types of internal customer. Tangible goods can be as expensive as a mainframe
system or scientific machines and, similarly, be as economical as a ball pen or A4 paper.
Intangible goods can be information or administrative, clearance and security service.
These varieties of products form multiple complex procurement processes that cannot be
solely managed in a same way. Here, some important methods that the supply chain
department implements to handle this complexity are discussed.
Authority of expenditure. At the beginning of the purchasing process, supply chain
department checks the user’s authority of expenditure in order to prevent unauthorized
purchasing, maintain control over spending and spot potential internal fraud. If the
requisitioner is insufficient authority to purchase the goods, they will be asked to obtain high
level management of signature/ agreement, which provide enough authority of expenditure.
Sharing equipment within university and across universities. For academic equipment, if the
PR amount in single item is over one million, supply chain department tend to spend effort on
checking the appropriateness of purchasing this item through discussion with other
departments and sister universities. Sometimes, the item would not be necessary to
purchase because similar equipment would be borrowed or worked with the internal
departments and sister university so as to ensure the ‘‘accountability’’.
Supply base development. Ensuring adequate supply base, supply chain department
checks the similar purchases in the university and sister institutions, the registered suppliers
with similar nature, the reference materials from exhibition, seminar, Internet and Yellow Page
and the users for any potential suppliers. Multiple sourcing is used to increase bargaining
power in order to improve ‘‘value for money’’.
The analysis of supply chains
After the general discussion of the supply chain management and procurement processes in
City University of Hong Kong, this paper analyzes three distinctive supply chains in order to
discuss the problems of it. First, commodity supply chain that purchasesMRO items targets at
low-cost. Second, special requested supply chain that purchases the goods specially
requested by academic user targets on high quality. Third, outsourcing supply chain that
out-sources non-core student service targets on flexibility, quality and total cost of ownership.
Commodity supply chain
As discussed previously, commodity supply chain processes commodity purchase and
form the supply chain targeting at cost (Figure 2). The commodity supply chain deal with the
material supply that is low unit cost but requires frequent transaction. To deal with it, supply
Figure 1 Generic City University of Hong Kong supply chain
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chain targets at reduction on administrative and processing cost. For example, office
stationery that each department requires is in small lot size but frequent transaction.
There are two types of activities between suppliers and the university. In the activities 1, Supply
chain department forecasts one-year or half-a-year quantity of the commodity and then uses
the quantity to ask for the tender from the suppliers. This calls standard order, which order once
per year or half-a-year with the appropriated suppliers in the market. Since, the commodity is
commonly available in the market, the university deals with the suppliers at arm’s length. The
supplier, who provides the lowest unit cost for the commodity, gets this order and becomes the
preferred suppliers in the university. Next, in the activities 2, when the users request on the
commodity, they search for the information provided by the supply chain department to contact
with the preferred supplier, orders the materials and credits their account themselves.
Special requested supply chain
Special requested supply chain processes the special requests for the users, e.g. professor,
departments, for general or professional products, e.g. testing and measurement machines
for research and laboratory. This type of supply chain is critical to the university as the unit
value of each purchase is always large. Supply chain department therefore deals with it
case-by-case. Comparing with the commodity, the focus on the special requested orders
would be technical support, maintenance, quality and, we can say, total cost of ownership.
In general, when a user requests for an order, he have to specify the order specification. It
has the specification of the performance and that of the specific (Figure 3).
Figure 2 Commodity supply chain
Figure 3 Special requested supply chain
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The performance specification means that user only requests for certain functions in the
order. For example, a researcher may request to buy a general testing machine with certain
universally standardized functions. In face of this request, the supply chain department
tends to handle it to request for the tender, which highlights the performance requirement of
the testing machine, in the supply market. Depended on the tender information, supply
chain department can flexibly decide the best supplier on providing the testing machine in
the cost-effective manner.
On the other hand, the specific specification means the user requires professional product, in
which the userhas specified the functions, and, sometimes, suggested suppliers, in the order.
Because of the specific functions required, the order value is very high and the supply chain
department has always limited choices of suppliers, which could be either suggested by the
user or searched in relevant professional directories and existing suppliers. The suppliers with
their appointed agencies could be selected and the tender would be compared with these
suppliers leading to limited bargaining power from the university. For example, a professor
may request a professional testing machine, which can measure certain nano-materials with
specified reliabilities and other requirements. Because of the technological non-proficiency of
the supply chain department, they usually search on the suppliers suggested by the
professor. Even if there are other suppliers in the market, the number of them is a few and they
usually deal with the department through appointed professional agencies. In this way, the
department has a few choices of suppliers, which leads to lower bargaining power to deal with
it. In addition, the high-value nature of the order causes the department to focus on the total
cost of ownership, e.g. technical support, maintenance and quality.
Meanwhile, the relationship with the suppliers is long-term but contractual with tender
requirement because the suppliers usually service the ordered products through contractual
maintenance and operational supports annually. With the long-term relationship, the suppliers
share updated information of product, support service and customized upgrading suggestions.
Outsourcing supply chain
Outsourcing supply chain focus on the outsourcing of non-core student services to suppliers
(Figure 4). It is very critical for the university to determine which student services are
non-core and thereby should be outsourced. The decision on the outsourcing would be
case-by case and generally depend on the performance of outsourcing, compared with the
in-sourcing one. Outsourcing provides low-cost but flexibility services, but in-sourcing keep
the core-service in-house and provides the sense of belonging and self-control. However, as
the outsourcing decisions are made individually, it should be presented through several
outsourcing and in-sourcing services in the university. The outsourced services include
bookstore, computer, clearance and security services. The in-sourced services include
hostel, counseling and on-line teaching services.
Figure 4 Outsourcing supply chain
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The university out sources the student service if the service is non-core and performed well
by outside business organization. Bookstore has long outsourced to business organization.
The university decides to outsource the bookstore service because they have comparatively
a few capital, human and know-how resources to deal with it and should be performed
poorer than the outside professional bookstore. When the university operates the bookstore,
they cannot gain the benefit but the outsourced supplier can pay the rent and take the
accountability to service the user requirement in the university. In addition, the purchasing
order requested by academics in the university is always small volume. This leads to that the
university always gets lower discounts than that of the business organization, which has
large volume of aggregated purchasing orders. Furthermore, the outsourced supplier
should be professional bookstore service provider, which has large supply base that provide
large variety of publications to the users. When the university provides stationery and other
academic related products, they university need to handle the logistical and operational cost
that can be prevented if outsourcing the bookstore. Outsourcing would be the better choice.
The contractual agreement with the outsourced suppliers also ensures the quality of bookstore
service. The university limits the quantity, quality and availability of the publications and the
nature of bookstore similar to the university. For example, they make an agreement with the
supplier to ensure which types of book can be shown and required to shown.
The computer service constitutes core and non-core student services. The core service is to
provide safe networking/information systems to the users in the university. The systems
could be the student personal information system, human resources and administrative
systems, web-based teaching, bulletin broad and electronic mail services system. The
non-core service is to service the students with desktop computer hardware services and
maintenance. After the university has identified the non-core service, the supply chain
department makes the outsourcing decision on the non-core services because the
outsourced supplier can provide frequently upgradeable hardware service and professional
technical support with lower cost. However, the decision is to outsource all the computer
hardware to one supplier in the part of the campus, but not the whole campus. It is because
no supplier can provide the entire service required by the diverse users in the university. The
users in computer science require high-end server level computers, or even
supercomputers. The users in multi-media science require the computer with great 3D
graphical capabilities. The users in engineering science tend to build up their low-cost DIY
computer themselves. No one supplier can satisfy all the users in the university. Supply chain
department therefore aggregates the number of the computer hardware with general
purpose and out sources to one supplier that provides better service to the university.
Similarly, when clearance and security are decided as important non-core student services,
the university tends to find the proper outsourcing opportunities. The university decides to
outsource the services because the supplier can provide low-cost but flexibility to the
university. The clearance is outsourced because it is lower cost than the university operates.
It also provides the flexibility to increase and decrease the workers in different situations.
However, the scope of outsourcing the clearance is limited to clearance services, other
commodities, i.e. toilet tissue, liquid detergent, are in-sourced to keep the quality of supply.
Similarly, security is also low-cost when it is outsourced. However, the flexibility of security is
the key here. City University of Hong Kong always arranges academic meetings in different
sizes, e.g. exhibitions, symposiums, conferences etc. The outsourced suppliers can flexibly
provide appropriate workforce to handle these meetings. This flexibility of workforce cannot
be performed by the university. In fact, the university is not worthy to employ extra long-term
workforce to handle the occasional exhibitions because this is too expensive to employ and
train extra security guards, who is always idle, in the university. However, the outsourced
supplier can arrange its trained workforce to handle the occasional exhibitions with low cost
but high quality.
Although these services are non-core services, it is important to keep the campus clean and
safe. Supply chain department therefore specify performance specifications and
supplementary documents to guide the quality and quantity of service. For example, they
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decide the frequent and timeliness of washroom clearance services per day. They also
develop internal monitoring teams with support of the supplier supervision to monitor and
control the continuous quality of supply.
On the other hand, the university in-sources core student services, which directly affect their
academic performance. Hostel service has decided to be in-sourced, although the outsourcing
of hostel service provides low-cost solution. The decision is made by the goals of the hostel. The
goals of hostel are to sharpen the student’s social and communication skills, nurture the
leadership qualities and encourage greater participation in academic and community
development (City University of Hong Kong website, 2003). Outsourcing hostel service can
provide low-cost and flexible hostel service, but can not achieve the goals to enrich the campus
life for the student. As a taught university, City University of Hong Kong has trained and
professional employees to educate the student with a sense of the ownership and pay extra
hours to encourage the student to improve various skills and developments, which the outside
organization can not do it. Therefore, the university decides to in-source this hostel service.
Consequently, the student counseling service cannot be outsourced because the service is
core student service. The counseling service provides the student all-round development that
has to follow the university vision. Therefore, the university defines it is their core student service,
which requires full control and management. Outsourcing is not suggested in this situation.
Meanwhile, the on-line teaching service is a few discussed in the section of outsourcing.
Somebody said that universities can outsource the teaching services to some famous
universities or professors. Through the Internet, the famous academicians can make lessons
to the large number of students in real-time, which is cost-effective and high-quality
teaching. However, City University of Hong Kong is a taught university, which should employ
high-quality professors to teach the student and do the research so as to enhance the both
research and educational performances of the university. Outsourcing the teaching
capabilities through networks would damage the capability of the university to purse the
academic achievement. It also impairs the relationships among existing professors, the
university and the student. It diminishes the sense of belongings within the university and
loses the chance to cumulate knowledge and research achievement across the academic
staffs in the university. The profit nature of the outsourced supplier may limit their staff to
devote less resource to educate the students, which perform poorer academic results. As a
result, this core student service, either on-line or off-line, is prohibited.
After the decisions of outsourcing have been made, supply chain department write very
detailed requests and betted by various suppliers. Because all of the outsourcing supply
chain, either core or non-core services, are long-term and affect the large number of users in
various ways, the supplier is sourced, selected, negotiated and dealt with lots of resources
through the detail procurement process, with highlighted by service quality, flexibility and
cost-effectiveness. Long-term partnership has to build up between the university and the
suppliers to cooperate and innovate with each other in improving the user satisfaction, e.g.
co-supervision with the workers, regular meetings with the suppliers and the service
information shared between the university and the suppliers.
Findings
The findings are twofold. The university has successfully classified different values of
products and managed it. Commodity supply chain, managing the product with low-value
but frequent transactions, is developed with low administration cost so as to reduce the total
cost of the commodity supply chain. Special requested supply chain, managing expensive
and occasional transactions, is managed critically to fulfill the product requirement by
joining the users in purchasing decision. Outsourcing supply chain, managing outsourced
student activities, is administered by long-term co-operation with the outsourced suppliers.
It ensures the quality and reliability of the outsourcing student services.
However, the special requested supply chain may be too tight to set for the cost-effective
manner when some users ask for over-specifications of supplies. It is similar that, in the
business organization, engineering manager always asks for high quality material that may not
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be necessarily useful for the end-product quality, but may limit the choice of supplier and
thereby increase the cost of supply. Supply chain manager should ensure that the product
specification should be good enough to do the user’s duty, rather than satisfy the user’s hope.
Discussion
The strategic supply chains that could affect the university goal are developed. The user, who
requests the products, may not be the end-user. Rather, the users and other departments
should have the same vision to achieve the university goals, which should be good graduates
and research achievements. Therefore, a ‘‘student’’ and a ‘‘research’’supply chain are drawn.
The ‘‘student’’ supply chain is suggested that student is a raw material and finished product,
the student services processes the raw material to be a high quality product and academic
and non-academic staffs are the operators, who process the raw material (Figure 5).
Meanwhile, the ‘‘research’ ’ supply chain is developed that the research idea is a raw material
and its achievement is the finished product, the research activities processes the raw material,
the researchers and other academic and non-academic staffs are the operators (Figure 6).
In the ‘‘student’’ supply chain, there are direct and indirect student services to process the
raw material (student). Direct student services include student design and development,
student sourcing and selection, student academic and non-academic trainings, student
practical trainings, student result testing and finally student further development. The
indirect student services are campus advancement and maintenances, IT infrastructure,
hostel, clearances, bookstore, security, restaurants and sport facilities, etc.
After the formation of the ‘‘student’’ supply chain, we can understand that any special
requested supply chain relating to this supply chain should be presented as a part of this
supply chain. The goal of this supply chain is to develop the best quality graduates (product)
with limited resources in the society, who is supplier and consumer. For example, if a
professor specially request a testing machine, which is used to educate the engineering
Figure 5 The ‘‘student’’ supply chain in City University of Hong Kong
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student in a course. This means that the testing machine is a part of the student academic
trainings. The specification of the testing machine should be limited to be good enough to
teach the students. Extra specifications of the testing machine should be ignored. To
coordinate the supply chain, the machine should also be new and standardized enough to
prepare for the student further development and student practical trainings.
Furthermore, the cooperation between academic student services and non-academic one
should be highly developed that student can learn effectively so as to fit for the society. A few
important non-academic courses should be mandated to study as part of academic course,
such as leadership, planning, society and communication skills. It could help the student to
perform better in student practical trainings, i.e. group reports, and group final year projects,
in order to provide all-round graduates for the society.
Finally, every student should be designed and developed critically. Every student should be
assigned by a professor, which supervises the student development process throughout the
supply chain. It is because the student is non-identical and the university can not set up one
supply chain process for all the students. Customized supply chain processes for each
student is suggested to ensure the student quality.
In the ‘‘research’’ supply chain, there are direct and indirect services according to research
process. The direct services are the research processes, such as idea generation,
instrument development, data gathering, data analysis and dissemination. The indirect
services consist of campus advancement and maintenances, IT infrastructure, library,
clearances, bookstore, security, restaurants, etc.
Research is defined as ‘‘seeking through methodical processes to add to one’s own body of
knowledge and, hopefully, to that of others, by the discovery of non-trivial facts and insights
(Sharp and Howard, 1996).’’ In the university, the knowledge is defined to add to existing
knowledge in the field of academic and non-academic world. It can be a new machine
development, a basic knowledge discovery and an applied knowledge for problem solving.
In the supply chain, the ‘‘research’’ is a product that is developed by a set of academic and
non-academic operators internally and externally. Who create the research idea and
sponsor the research are the suppliers. The society and the research sponsor that could
gain the knowledge from the research are the consumer. Therefore, research should be
managed in order to use the resource to satisfy the society and sponsor through
synchronized supply chain.
Figure 6 The ‘‘research’’ supply chain
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Research is expensive and long term product that requires customized and responsive
supply chain to satisfy the customer. For example, if there is an applied research to develop
a specific IT system for an industry, the supply chain should be used to search for all the
relevant operators, who are professional in developing the IT system, and the facilitates,
which can execute the research faster. Integration across departments, even universities
and business organizations are suggested. Resource should be spent on developing the IT
system fit for the industry, rather than the whole industries.
On the other hand, if there is a basic research to develop a few social observations through
survey as a mean to gather relevant data, the supply chain should be managed to
communicate the professionals and facilities in the university so as to prevent duplicated
research scope and to streamline the survey time and cost. The resource should be spent on
the theoretical development and theoretical contribution, rather than the business
application. More importantly, non-academic and academic departments should be
integrated to help the operators to perform their jobs. Non-academic departments, which
has usually an indirect affect on the research, should proactively involve in the research
development to ensure that the research designed by academic departments are within the
limited capabilities of the non-academic one. It is similar to involve manufacturing
engineering in product design so as to improve the product manufacturability.
Limitations
This exploratory study has several limitations. The first limitation is the theoretical generalizability.
This single case has explored the current patterns of supply chain management in a higher
education institution, leading to two innovative management ideas to further improve the supply
chain performance, but the case study is weak to generalize through a single case approach.
Further studies via multiple cases are required to validate our findings.
Second, this study is explorative in nature, in which this study firstly develops a supply chain
view of higher education management. Judging from the results of this research, it is clear
that this research is relatively weak in performance measurement of supply chain
management in higher education institutions. Although this study tried to obtain the
performance of the case university, however, the results are inconclusive and subjective in
nature. In fact, there is not sales volume, profitability, and return on investments, which are
traditional performance measurements in business organization (Rosenzweig et al., 2003),
to objectively measure the performance of a university.
Conclusion
City University of Hong Kong is a non-profit organization educating thousands of students in
a variety of subjects. We showed that, to manage its supply chain, supply chain department
has classified different supply chains and manage them in different ways, i.e. commodity,
special requested and outsourcing supply chains. We also discussed the improvement
methods for the university to improve its supply chain management by developing two
strategic supply chains, i.e. the ‘ ‘student’’ and the ‘‘research’’ supply chains.
However, it leaves some unanswered problems in managing supply chain in the academy.
First, information synchronization and visibility are key but difficult to achieve in academic
world. Competitions across departments and within department are intensive in close
research area. Researchers tend to keep the knowledge in secret before launch it leading to
the duplication of resource allocation. For example, when a researcher prepares for a
mailing survey, he is required to type the mailing address of each sample and contact
himself, if he does not know that another researcher has prepared those materials, and even
relevant primary data. The argument here is the resource to allocate to the researchers has
been duplicated. The invisibility of the information harms the educational supply chain
performance. Top management and faculty support is suggested to further study so as to
successfully implement supply chain management in the institution of higher education.
Furthermore, outsourcing is important to consider when the university can understand the
indirect student services. Dietz and Enchelmayer (2001) stated that outsourcing services and
programs selectively is an effective mean to provide strong educational programs.
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Outsourcing or Joint venture of the IT and networking services to business organization is
suggested. In fact, business organization has outsourced their IT facilities to IT specialists
although the information within the facilities may cost the business survivability. Outsourcing
the whole clearance service also provides a total solution to the university, which prevent from
the administrative cost in the commodity purchases. With better contractual agreement, the
quality of the supply about the commodity should be guaranteed. However, there should be no
research in this area that studies outsourcing in the educational supply chain.
Supply chain management helps the business organization to compete in the dynamic
global market. The goal of supply chain management is to integrate activities across and
within organizations for providing the customer value. It should also be useful to implement
in the educational supply chain, one type of non-profit organizations. The goal of it is to
provide the society value by high quality graduate and research achievement. In fact, when
supply chain researchers develop different kinds of models for helping business
organization, they should not forget to develop the same quality of models for helping
their institutions.
References
City University of Hong Kong (2003), web site available at: www.cityu.edu.hk
Dietz, L.H. and Enchelmayer, E.J. (2001), ‘ ‘Developing external partnerships for cost-effective,
enhanced service’’, in Dietz, L.H. and Enchelmayer, E.J. (Eds), New Directions for Student Services,
No. 96, Jossey-Bass, San Francisco, CA.
Drucker, P.F. (1992), Managing the Non-Profit Organization: Practices and Principles, Harper Collins
Publishers, New York, NY.
Firstenberg, P.B. (1996), The 21st Century Nonprofit: Remarking the Organization in the
Post-Government Era, The Foundation Center, New York, NY.
Hay, R.D. (1990), Strategic Management in Non-Profit Organizations: An Administrator’s Handbook,
Quorum Books, Westport, CT.
Mentzer, J.T. (2001), Supply Chain Management, Sage Publications, Thousand Oaks, CA.
Rosenzweig, E.D., Roth, A.V. and Dean, J.W. Jr (2003), ‘‘The influence of an integration strategy on
competitive capabilities and business performance: an exploratory study of consumer products
manufacturers’’, Journal of Operations Management, Vol. 21 No. 4, pp. 437-56.
Sharp, J.A. and Howard, K. (1996), The Management of a Student Research Project, 2nd ed.,
Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Steven, G.C. (1989), ‘‘Integrating supply chain’ ’, International Journal of Physical Distribution & Logistics
Management, Vol. 19 No. 8, pp. 19-23.
Yin, R.K. (1994), Case Study Research: Design and Methods, 2nd ed., Sage Publications, Thousand
Oaks, CA.
Further reading
City University of Hong Kong (2002), Financial Report, 2001-2002.
O’Brien, E. and Deans, K.R. (1996), ‘‘Educational supply chain: a tool for strategic planning in tertiary
education?’’, Marketing Intelligence & Planning, Vol. 14 No. 2, pp. 33-40.
Appendix. The Interview questionnaire
Part A: General supply chain management in non-profit organization
A1. What is the goal of supply chain management?
A2. What is (are) the principal product(s), customers and suppliers of your organization
in the supply chain? Could you define them? Material and informational.
A3 How does the supply chain start in your organization? Material and informational.
A4 How does it flow? Material and informational.
A5 Do the goal achieved? Why?
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Part B: External supply chain management
B1. How do you manage your external supply chain?
B2. What type of activities that your organization uses to work with your customer?
Which factor that your organization concerns mostly?
B3. What type of activities that your organization uses to cooperate with supplier?
Which factor that your company concerns mostly?
B4. What information technology that your organization have used and planned to use?
How does u comment on these technologies?
Part C: Internal supply chain management
C1. How do you manage your internal supply chain?
C2. What type of activities that your organization uses to cooperate with other internal
functions? Which factor that your company concerns mostly?
C3. Is there any difficulty in managing internal and external supply chain?
Part D: Future Plan on supply chain management
D1. Are there any other factors that are needed to consider making future plans and
decisions in relation to supply chain development? Internal & External.
D2. In your experience, please comment on the difference between profit and
non-profit organization in terms of supply chain management.
D3. In all sense, do you satisfy on today’s supply chain performance in your
organization? Either yes or not, please explains in detail.
Part E: The details of three supply chains in City University of Hong Kong
E1: Commodity supply chain.
E2: Special requested supply chain.
E3: Outsourcing supply chain.
Part F: Future plan on the supply chains
F1: What are City University of Hong Kong going to do to improve the supply chains
below: a. Commodity supply chains; b. Special requested supply chains; & c.
Outsourcing supply chains?
Part G: Comments on existing supply chain management in City University of Hong Kong
G1: How would you comment on the supply chain management in City University of
Hong Kong? e.g. Outsourcing, Supply chain strategies aligning with the university
goals, Centralized purchasing across universities, Integrating purchasing,
inventory management, inbound and outbound logistics within the campus,
& Implementing common business practises into the campus.
Corresponding author
Antonio K.W. Lau can be contacted at: melkwa@cityu.edu.hk
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