Educational supply chain management: a case study

Antonio K.W. Lau

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

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 Yins approach to interview the personnel of a supply chain department and collected the university documents. Findings The study identied 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 efciency 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 ndings 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 identies 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 prot organizations for adding value or reducing cost in supply chain partners; however, a few literatures relatively discuss them in nonprot organization. Hay (1990) characterizes that prot organization tends to make money while nonprot organization tends to place the money as minor objective. The money gained from nonprot organization would be used to balance the expenditure of the organization. That may cause the management of prot 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

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non-prot organization. However, there is very little research on it. Firstenberg (1996) then states that nonprot organizations can be as well managed as enterprises formed solely to make a prot. That means that management should be important for the non-prot 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 lls 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 dened 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 Construct validity Denitions Establishing correct operational measures for the concepts Tactics being used Multiple sources of evidence: Public information, university documents, and personal interviews with purchasing and supply chain managers, departmental users, students Pattern-matching: Matching the similar pattern in the supply chain management Comparing the empirical data with literature review

Internal validity

Establishing causal relationship, whereby certain conditions are shown to lead to other conditions, as distinguished from spurious relationships

External validity Reliability Source: Yin, 1994

Establishing the domain to which a studys ndings can Replication logics from many supply chains within the be generalized university Demonstrating that the operations of a study can be repeated with the same results A case study protocol used in each project. A case database being developed

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City University of Hong Kong is one of seven nonprot 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 universitys 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 eld 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. ofce stationary, toilet paper and other MRO items. The supply chain management rst 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. exibility, 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. specic research instruments and hi-tech machines. For example, Laser measurement instruments could be very specic, 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 fulll 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 specic 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

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Figure 1 Generic City University of Hong Kong supply chain

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 scientic 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 users authority of expenditure in order to prevent unauthorized purchasing, maintain control over spending and spot potential internal fraud. If the requisitioner is insufcient 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 reference materials 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 purchases MRO 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 exibility, 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

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Figure 2 Commodity supply chain

chain targets at reduction on administrative and processing cost. For example, ofce 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 arms 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 specication. It has the specication of the performance and that of the specic (Figure 3).

Figure 3 Special requested supply chain

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The performance specication 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 exibly decide the best supplier on providing the testing machine in the cost-effective manner. On the other hand, the specic specication means the user requires professional product, in which the user has specied the functions, and, sometimes, suggested suppliers, in the order. Because of the specic 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 specied reliabilities and other requirements. Because of the technological non-prociency 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 exibility 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

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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 benet 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 identied 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 nd the proper outsourcing opportunities. The university decides to outsource the services because the supplier can provide low-cost but exibility to the university. The clearance is outsourced because it is lower cost than the university operates. It also provides the exibility 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 exibility 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 exibly provide appropriate workforce to handle these meetings. This exibility 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 specications and supplementary documents to guide the quality and quantity of service. For example, they

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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 students 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 exible 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 denes 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 prot 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, exibility 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 ndings are twofold. The university has successfully classied 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 fulll 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-specications of supplies. It is similar that, in the business organization, engineering manager always asks for high quality material that may not

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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 specication should be good enough to do the users duty, rather than satisfy the users 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 nished 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 nished product, the research activities processes the raw material, 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 nally 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

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Figure 6 The research supply chain

student in a course. This means that the testing machine is a part of the student academic trainings. The specication of the testing machine should be limited to be good enough to teach the students. Extra specications 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 t 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 nal 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 dened as seeking through methodical processes to add to ones 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 dened to add to existing knowledge in the eld 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.

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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 specic 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 t 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 rst 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 ndings. Second, this study is explorative in nature, in which this study rstly 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, protability, 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-prot organization educating thousands of students in a variety of subjects. We showed that, to manage its supply chain, supply chain department has classied 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 difcult 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.

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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-prot 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-Prot Organization: Practices and Principles, Harper Collins Publishers, New York, NY. Firstenberg, P.B. (1996), The 21st Century Nonprot: Remarking the Organization in the Post-Government Era, The Foundation Center, New York, NY. Hay, R.D. (1990), Strategic Management in Non-Prot Organizations: An Administrators 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 inuence 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. OBrien, 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-prot organization A1. A2. A3 A4 A5 What is the goal of supply chain management? What is (are) the principal product(s), customers and suppliers of your organization in the supply chain? Could you dene them? Material and informational. How does the supply chain start in your organization? Material and informational. How does it ow? Material and informational. Do the goal achieved? Why?

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Part B: External supply chain management B1. B2. B3. B4. How do you manage your external supply chain? What type of activities that your organization uses to work with your customer? Which factor that your organization concerns mostly? What type of activities that your organization uses to cooperate with supplier? Which factor that your company concerns mostly? 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. C2. C3. How do you manage your internal supply chain? What type of activities that your organization uses to cooperate with other internal functions? Which factor that your company concerns mostly? Is there any difculty in managing internal and external supply chain?

Part D: Future Plan on supply chain management D1. D2. D3. Are there any other factors that are needed to consider making future plans and decisions in relation to supply chain development? Internal & External. In your experience, please comment on the difference between prot and non-prot organization in terms of supply chain management. In all sense, do you satisfy on todays 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: E2: E3: Commodity supply chain. Special requested supply chain. 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: melkwa@cityu.edu.hk

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VOL. 15 NO. 1 2007 ON THE HORIZON PAGE 27