The Social Side of Supply Chain Management
Social media can—and should—play a central role in supply chain management. After all, social networking is not really about socializing, but about facilitating people-to-people communication and collaboration. And isn’t that at the heart of managing and executing supply chain processes—and in the process achieving a measure of excellence?
In 1996, when I was a young engineer working at Motorola, there were only a handful of employees—in a few hand-picked departments—who were allowed access to the Internet and external websites from their work computers. I was not one of them, so I had to sneak to my friend’s cubicle after work hours to surf the Internet. (I was living in Arizona at the time and searching for a job back east, and my dial-up connection at home was painfully slow).
Motorola, like many companies back then, was treading very carefully and slowly toward the Internet era. The company feared that employee productivity would drop significantly if everyone were given access to the Web. Managers were concerned that everybody would be wasting hours surfing the Internet instead of working. Motorola also worried about having to deal with a whole new set of HR issues if employees started visiting “inappropriate” (read: pornographic) websites.
Other companies at the time were equally cautious and fearful. One supply chain executive, for example, told me at a workshop last summer that his company required employees to fill out a permission form if they wanted to email somebody outside the company.
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In 1996, when I was a young engineer working at Motorola, there were only a handful of employees—in a few hand-picked departments—who were allowed access to the Internet and external websites from their work computers. I was not one of them, so I had to sneak to my friend’s cubicle after work hours to surf the Internet. (I was living in Arizona at the time and searching for a job back east, and my dial-up connection at home was painfully slow).
Motorola, like many companies back then, was treading very carefully and slowly toward the Internet era. The company feared that employee productivity would drop significantly if everyone were given access to the Web. Managers were concerned that everybody would be wasting hours surfing the Internet instead of working. Motorola also worried about having to deal with a whole new set of HR issues if employees started visiting “inappropriate” (read: pornographic) websites.
Other companies at the time were equally cautious and fearful. One supply chain executive, for example, told me at a workshop last summer that his company required employees to fill out a permission form if they wanted to email somebody outside the company.
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