The importance of being able to effectively manage supply inputs varies between organisations. Financial institutions, for example, rely relatively little on their suppliers. For engineering companies like Rolls-Royce, IT vendors like IBM and the supermarket giants like Tesco however, the effective management of suppliers is critical to the entire operation of the firm. The quality, technology, cost and delivery performance of their suppliers has a critical and far-reaching impact upon their ability to meet the challenges of their competitors and the demands of their customers.
The module is organised in accordance with the different stages of the contracting and negotiation process - from the specification to the development activities that might occur during the contractual period. To discuss the challenges that the process delivers to managers, the module accesses a range of different literatures: strategic management, organisational buying behaviour, information economics, decision theory, inter-organisational relations, behavioural economics, institutional economics and conflict theory. Whilst being heavily theoretical, the module also accesses considerable case evidence, much of it obtained by the lecturer during his own research efforts.
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