The Work Force and Information Technology

Abstract

The growth of the concept of supply chain management (SCM) is the direct result of several dramatic changes in the way today’s business environment is structured and how companies compete for marketplace advantage. Some of these changes are to be found in the methods by which products are developed, manufactured, warehoused, and sold, the way the enterprise is organized and its productivities measured, and the skills required to manage, motivate, and empower the work force. Other changes have come from without. The global marketplace has rendered obsolete the vision (which was surely never a practical strategy) that single companies could seize and maintain market leadership solely by the strength of their own efforts and precipitated the age of the “virtual” organization and supply chain partnership. The explosion in the various forms of information technology has also acted as the catalyst as well as the foundation of today’s revolution in the way customers and suppliers engage in the business of buying and selling. Finally, these changes have altered forever almost century-long organizational models by which companies were run, the structure of the relations existing between management and labor, the methods used to plan and measure competitive success, and the place each company occupied in the business ecosystems of which they were a part.