Supply Chain Management (SCM): Theory and Evolution

Abstract

IntroductionDuring last decade, researchers usually focused on Supply Chain Management (SCM) issues in profit organizations.Research objectives may include adding value, reducing cost, or slashing response time in various parties involved in the manufacturing supply chain.However, very few studies were attempted in non-profit organizations.An extremely scarce number of research papers focused on SCM in the academia (Habib, 2011(Habib, , 2010e, 2010d, 2010f, 2010g), 2010f, 2010g).Hay (1990) states that a profit organization attempts to maximize profits, whereas a non-profit organization considers monetary returns of less importance.Their major objectives may include improved literacy rate, better quality of life, equal opportunities for all genders or races, etc.The revenues gained by a non-profit organization would be used primarily to balance the expenditure of the organization.Due to conflicting objectives, managing a successful profit organization may be drastically different from a non-profit organization (Firstenberg, 1996; Drucker, 1992).Recently, an increasingly large number of research studies highlight the criticalness of SCM as a means to assuring organizational success.SCM assists the business organization to compete in the dynamic international market.The objective of SCM is to incorporate activities across and within organizations for providing the customer value.This should also be applicable to the academia, which represents a type of non-profit organizations.The goal is to provide the society value by producing high quality graduates and research outcomes.An integrated educational supply chain involves coordination and information sharing up and down the process among all stakeholders.With technology facilitating information flow, a coordinated supply chain can be designed to meet the strategic, planning, and operating objectives of the educational institutions.It also means establishing effective and feasible relationships both inside and outside the organization (Sandelands, 1994).SCM is needed for various reasons: improving operations, better outsourcing, increasing profits, enhancing customer satisfaction, generating quality outcomes, tackling competitive pressures, increasing globalization, increasing importance of E-commerce, and growing complexity of supply chains (Stevenson, 2002).Supply chains are relatively easy to define for manufacturing industries, where each participant in the chain receives inputs from a set of suppliers, processes those inputs, and delivers them to a different set of customers.With www.intechopen.com How to referenceIn order to correctly reference this scholarly work, feel

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