Designing the “Right” Supply Chain Management Organizational Structure

Conclusions

As SCMOs continue to become more involved in the design and implementation of corporate strategy within an increasingly turbulent competitive environment, supply chain managers are often questioning which organizational design structure would work best for their firms’ situations. This publication highlights four key organizational factors to consider (i.e., leadership, span of authority, reporting structure, and coordinating structure) and discusses the strengths and weaknesses of four variants of reporting structure (i.e., functional, divisional, centralized matrix, and hybrid matrix reporting structures).

While three quarters of the firms that participated in this research had organizational designs at the extremes (i.e., functional ...