The barriers that firms may face on their way to internal logistical integration are possible to group into five categories by their origin and nature. The first derives from an insufficiently coherent structure of a business that results in poor communication among its departments. According to Bowersox (2019), this is the consequence of the “traditional practice” of uniting the employees who are responsible for certain activities into clusters to enable excellent performance though functional perfection (p. 332). In practice, meanwhile, such an approach can result in an insufficiently effective corporate culture, in other words, a lack of unity, morale, and dedication, frequently from top management as well (Naseem et al., 2021). My professional experience illustrates this; I have worked for a firm where the boss showed little to no interest in organizational routine. Furthermore, some of my coworkers from different departments considered their function the most important, offending each other.
The traditional systems of management and reward, which actually result from the above functional structure, also can be an obstacle to internal integration. Notably, they “mirror” that structure, focusing on employees’ achievements in the area of their activity rather than their involvement in corporate culture and contribution to the performance of the entire company (Bowersox, 2019, p. 332). In fact, this begins ever before employment; many educational institutions stick to the classical assessment system that uses grades as the only measurement. Consequently, school leavers as well as graduates, including myself, have to acquire knowledge about other reward systems intentionally, and it remains theoretical in most cases.
Considering the above, information flows in companies of traditional structure normally lack integrity as well. Specifically, the data such businesses operate should be possible to organize by functionality and accountability, which automatically limits their scope and area of use (Bowersox, 2019). This can result not only in poor integration of departments, but also in insufficient communication with customers and inappropriate quality of service; therefore, Naseem et al. (2021) prefer to label this category coordination barriers. In fact, the company I mention in the first paragraph also can serve as an example in the given case. The lack of unity, notably, led to that of awareness and dedication; consequently, few employees were able to provide high quality services.
It is worth noting that such obstructed circulation of data interferes with knowledge exchange, which, in turn, can complicate the integration of new units in the company. Therefore, such businesses have poor capacity of expansion as well as partnership; these call for cross-functionality, while the traditional structure does not enable it. Furthermore, even the need to hire a new employee may bear a threat for productivity since it will be hardly possible to compensate for his or her lack of relevant knowledge (Bowersox, 2019). This actually is among the reasons why I left the above company. Specifically, I did not see any development prospects there, as the informational restrictions prevented me from adequate self-actualization.
Finally, another possible barrier is inappropriate infrastructure, which umbrella term comprises, primarily, transportation, storage, and inventory. Thus, the latter, as Bowersox (2019) insists, should be in the minimal quantity that it necessary for surviving drops in demand or similar perturbations. Otherwise, a business may face considerable financial challenges emerging from the need to store and maintain extra equipment; its obsolescence can aggravate the situation. In fact, this is a quite natural phenomenon even in everyday life, for instance, many have cupboards full of unnecessary items, and I am not an exception. In business, however, such practice is especially unfavorable because it can interfere with process integration.
References
Bowersox, D. (2019). Supply chain logistics management (5th Ed.). McGraw-Hill Higher Education.
Naseem, M. H., Yang, J., & Xiang, Z. (2021). Prioritizing the solutions to reverse logistics barriers for the e-commerce industry in Pakistan based on a Fuzzy AHP-TOPSIS approach. Sustainability, 13, 12743. Web.