Educational supply chain management: a case study

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 chain performance

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, Q Emerald Group Publishing Limited, ISSN 1074-8121 j ON THE HORIZON j PAGE 15

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 theconcepts

Multiple sources of evidence:Public information, university documents, and personalinterviews with purchasing and supply chain managers,departmental users, students

Internal validity Establishing causal relationship, whereby certainconditions are shown to lead to other conditions, asdistinguished from spurious relationships

Pattern-matching:Matching the similar pattern in the supply chainmanagementComparing the empirical data with literature review

External validity Establishing the domain to which a study’s findings canbe generalized

Replication logics from many supply chains within theuniversity

Reliability Demonstrating that the operations of a study can berepeated with the same results

A case study protocol used in each project. A casedatabase being developed

Source: Yin, 1994

PAGE 16 jON THE HORIZONj VOL. 15 NO. 1 2007

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

VOL. 15 NO. 1 2007 jON THE HORIZONj PAGE 17

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 referencematerials 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


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


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 user has 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


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


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, engineeringmanager always asks for high quality material that may not


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 rawmaterial,

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


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


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.


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?


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: [email protected]


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Educational supply chain management: a case study