Description
(Text)
The book provides deep, managerial relevant insight into the current challenges of coping with growing industry and organizational complexity. Based on an empirical study, covering five different industries, major complexity drivers for both organizations and industries are identified. Based on these findings the authors present how managers are able to develop appropriate strategies and organizational configurations to cope with these drivers. In particular, how to design or configure the backbone of the organization - the supply chain - appropriately, even if relocating complexity without jeopardizing the competitiveness and simplifying where no value is added, are difficult tasks. The book highlights that logistics as backbone of globally acting companies is a core element for managing complexity. In contrast to most of the recent publications, where the growing complexity of logistics is discussed, the authors focus on the potential of logistics to cope with growing complexity. It is not primarily logistics that becomes more and more complex; it is the system - organization or industry - in which logistics as interdepartmental or network-wide function is embedded. To make this clear: Logistics is not a major reason for, or central part of growing complexity - it is one of the main solutions.
