Reference no: EM133279556

Question: In what ways might a firm organize to do supply research? What are the advantages and disadvantages of each? Which would you recommend in an (a) small organization, (b) a medium-sized organization, and (c) a large organization?

There are three ways that a firm might conduct supply research: full-time research personnel, part-time responsibility for supply personnel, or cross-functional teams (Johnson, 2020). Some advantages of having full-time research are they only work on research and dedicate their time to digging in, analyzing the information, and fixing immediate problems. They have training and a special set of skills that a buyer doesn't usually possess. An advantage of a part-time researcher is based on the idea that the buyer does the researching and uses the information themselves. It's brief research, not as in depth as a full-time. An advantage to the cross-functional team is they are a combination of a researcher and planner, but they don't do buying. A major disadvantage of the full-time research position is it is very time consuming, and the buyer or system owner are usually the one that make the decision about what to do with the information that the researcher has given them, which may not always be interpreted or used in the correct manner. A disadvantage of a part-time researcher is there isn't much time to dedicate to gathering the information needed. A disadvantage of the cross-functional team is they typically overlap each other and if someone makes a mistake the person can't be pinpointed. Also, despite their potential, cross-functional teams also differ in their ability to respond to SC disruption warnings and to ensure firm robustness (De Vries, Van der Vegt, Scholten, & Van Donk, 2021).

I would recommend a part-time research team for a small organization because they will not have enough employees to dedicate individuals to just do supply research and the organization needs to make the process as efficient as possible. For a medium-sized organization I would recommend a full-time research team because they would be able to have employees dedicated strictly to supply research. I would recommend a cross-functional research team for a large organization because with proper leaders they would be able to cover more ground by splitting up into teams.