Social media: toward an integrated human ...

Social media: toward an integrated human collaboration in supply-chain management C.P.M. Sianipar, G. Yudoko School of Business and Management (SBM), Institut Teknologi Bandung (ITB), Bandung, West Java, Indonesia

Abstract Many advances in the information technology (IT) area have changed modern business practices. Such phenomenon has given a notion that human collaboration in supply chain management (SCM) has become more possible. In this third era of Internet technology, social media has been widely recognized as the most promising technology to socially connect people in virtual ways. Looking at these facts, this paper investigates the potential use of social media in SCM. This paper aims to explore the drivers of the use of social media for tightening human collaboration in the whole supply chain and to provide a framework of social media integration in SCM. Also, several rule of thumbs in implementing the integration are briefly described. This paper concludes that the integration of social media into SCM have required companies to understand the characteristics of SCM integration, the functional building blocks embedded in social media, and potential effects and impacts in the new environment. Any firm has to adapt social media into all business processes, meaning that strong attentions have to be addressed to the social media integration phases into supply chain as well as the integration phase of supply chain itself. Due to the fact that this topic still on its way to be a matured knowledge, this paper throws an initiation to understand the full potential of social media as well as the integration of social media to support human collaboration in SCM. Keywords: supply chain management, social media, human collaboration, business communication, information exchanges.

WIT Transactions on Information and Communication Technologies, Vol. 53, 0 2014 WIT Press www.witpress.com, ISSN 1743-3517 (on-line) doi:10.2495/Intelsys130221

250 Advances in Intelligent Systems

1 Introduction: issues and opportunities Supply chain management (SCM) has grown rapidly as one of the main focuses both in business and academic areas. The development of SCM had already given a strong notion that amplification of focus from "classic" term of logistics as a set of movements of forces and resources to become a managed partnership between several layers of customers and suppliers [1]. The philosophy of SCM is founded on collaboration among supply chain partners [2, 3]. Both Barratt [4] and Bowersox et al. [5] have noted that collaboration is one of the most frequently discussed topics in today's business discourses. The collaboration has intentionally built chained connections, both internal as well as external ones. In short, it results in a set of simultaneous joint-problem-solving [6] and jointdecision making [3] throughout the SCM. On the other hand, borderless interaction as one of the most important characteristics in present globalized society has supported the accelerated growth of supply chain scale, i.e., Toyota, one of the world's biggest car manufacturers as well as strongest car market penetrator, has its manufacturing plants in several countries at the same time such as in Brazil and Indonesia; the components and raw materials are supplied from vendors in many countries and then the Toyota headquarter allocates the networked distributions of their products to targeted markets throughout the world. Another example comes up from the supply chain of computer manufacturing processes. Ricardo [7] stated that a computer might be assembled in a country that is 5000 miles away from the place where its components are designed 3000 miles: some components are even possible to be separately manufactured in several countries due to some business and managerial considerations. In order to provide a broader picture how business has become much interconnected all around the world, Hill [8, p.5] noted that this world would become a boundary less in terms of cross-bordered trade and investment activities, meaning that latest advances in transportation and telecommunication technologies have begun in obliterating the business distance; material-related preferences are starting to look similar the world over; and finally global economics system would become more integrated and tend to push all financial systems into an interdependent national economics. Larger and larger scale means that a supply chain has to develop a good coordination through end-to-end connections. The negative impact that hit Apple triggered by a counterproductive issue on one of its most important component manufacturers in China, Foxconn, related to inadequate level of labor prosperity and well-being [9-13] is one of the interesting examples in which SCM must strengthen any possible collaboration and maintain information coordination throughout a long supply chain. Furthermore, a supply chain has to deal with an uncontrolled information dissemination throughout the society. Among several communities with high information technology (IT) penetration rates, people may get information from many sources. The widely opened and fully exposed information exchanges then bring a warning to SCM [9], meaning that a supply chain has to deal with many potential issues—both negative as well as positive ones—which are critical for the business interests of every supply chain party. On WIT Transactions on Information and Communication Technologies, Vol. 53, 0 2014 WIT Press www.witpress.com, ISSN 1743-3517 (on-line)

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the other hand, existing limitations of IT in several particular areas also affect the opportunities of supply chain collaboration. Lefebvre et al. [13] stated that since business partners are not equally well-informed of the potential usage of advanced e-tools for doing collaboration, and because of smaller firms are possible to experience critical difficulties in operating their internal system by using an electronically mediated environment due to a lack of competencies, asymmetric coordination and collaboration may occur along the supply chain, that is, Nias (Indonesia) cocoa farmers who have to deal with limited information which have caused the low bargaining position in cocoa supply chain industry [14]. In such case, the low bargaining position is triggered by several obstacles happened between farmers in developing cooperation and coordination among themselves. While the widely accepted standardized quality of cocoa commodity is changed but at the same time farmers cannot easily collaborate with the other ones, they cannot effectively develop their cocoa cultivation method to change the suitability of their product to the new standards. In fact, when the quality of a commodity varies in a region, its buyers will be more likely to decrease their valuation of the commodities; even worse, the buyers can easily dictate the purchase price of cocoa commodity. Those facts have provided a clear understanding that the collaboration between involved parties plays an important role in determining the partnership quality within a supply chain. Along with the discussions of collaboration in the SCM, there is a significant increase in the number of proposed models for applying supply chain collaboration and integration [15]; however, the real subject of collaboration in any of those proposed models is always the human. As listed in the work of Fawcett et al. [16], most of the practices and requirements for supply chain collaboration are done by human, and the rest are done for human, meaning that supply chain collaboration is the collaboration of humans in a chain as well as among the chains. Although there has been a doubtfulness of some human-related actions to be directly involved with the shifting needs of supply chain environment [17], as supply chains are continuously transformed to achieve greater performance, the SCM must give more attention to human [18]. On the other hand, the rapid growth of IT has triggered many advances in the area. Such phenomenon has also changed modern business practices, meaning that collaborative SCM has become more possible [19-22]. In this third era of internet technology, social media has become the most promising technology to socially connect people through virtual ways. It is much more than eye-to-eye contacts, gives the voice of individuals back, and also allows companies to efficiently tap into the power of their people [23]. The goal of assisting individuals throughout a supply chain to smoothly interact with one another, therefore, has been becoming a technological opportunity [24]. However, the SCM is continuously criticized for lack of the use of social media in their industry compared with the other kinds of industries [25]. The story of farmers in India throws a perfect example in which social media could help the supply chain parties—in that case: farmers—to develop their own cooperation, coordination, and then collaboration. From eliminating brokers for triggering market opportunities, that is useful for companies looking to capture rural buyers, to sharing information in real time,

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social media has continuously grown as a great tool of communication across 600,000 villages in India [26]. Based on those facts, the full potential use of social media has to be captured into SCM through an appropriate framework. This paper aims to describe the potential use and integration of social media in the SCM in terms of tightening human collaboration to increase the control of respective company to its supply chain. Thus, this study needs to answer these following research questions: RQ1 RQ2

Why do companies need to use social media in the SCM? How do companies seamlessly integrate social media into the SCM?

2 Literature reviews 2.1 Supply chain management The SCM has a very broad definition, which has made many parties to have caught in debates about the unified definition of SCM. Nothing less than each of the Supply Chain Council at The Ohio State University [27], the Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals (CSCMP) [28] and the Supply Chain Research Group at the University of Tennessee [29, 30] had offered its own definition; however, in fact, those perspectives are reciprocally overlapped. Esper et al. [31] explained that the overlaps of those SCM perspectives have risen the emergence of some important commonalities: (1) each point-of-view emphasized coordination among interconnected parties; (2) each of them highlighted the matched value of demand and supply; and (3) all of those definitions embraced a flows-based perspective. The CSCMP's perspective considered the flows through the definition of logistics management, while the Ohio State's and Tennessee's proposals explicitly addressed these flows. Furthermore, Shub and Stonebreaker [18] have stated that a supply chain referred to multiple stratums focusing on integration, collaborative activities, pursuing profitability, goals of service, and— as explained by Stonebraker and Liao [32]—concerned with adding value for their customer. The focus of SCM is the incorporation of three general purposes: supplier relationship management (SRM), internal supply chain management (ISCM), and customer relationship management (CRM) as a means to handle the smooth flow of information, products, and funds among a supply chain's members and providing significant additional value to any end customer [33]. Thus, the design of supply chain is commonly divided into five groupings: sourcing, inbound logistics, manufacturing (focal company), outbound logistics, and sales and after-market services; including required activities in each category [34]. Moreover, Harland [35] and Stonebraker and Afifi [36] have noted that the supply chain integration process referred to these following consecutive phases: 1. internal flows of information, resources, and forces; 2. diploid relations with direct suppliers and customers; 3. extended partnerships with the customer's customer and the supplier's supplier; and



4. networks of those which are involved in the delivery of services, products, and information packages Looking at these stages, most of the characteristics—if not all—of supply chain integration are developed based on the idea of collaboration. Besides, SCM is clearly a very human-centric phenomenon [37]. The integration, therefore, has to be done basically within humans in the SCM. 2.2 Collaboration As explained before, collaboration is the main philosophy among supply chain partners. Both Ellram and Cooper [38] and Horvath [39] have identified the driving force behind an effective SCM: the collaboration between interrelated chains. The collaboration is founded on the idea in which all chains have to act as separated as well as united entities to reach the goal of respective supply chain. In short, collaboration could be posited as the ultimate core capability of partnerships within a supply chain [40]. In terms of philosophy of collaboration itself, the idea of collaboration has been widely examined in many academic disciplines such as management [41], sociology [42], psychology [43], and also in several particular areas including marketing [44]. The collaboration could also jump over the boundaries to express itself as a cross network collaboration [45] such as the collaboration between university and industry in product design [46] and, of course, SCM [47, 48]. Co and Barro [49] stated that in running their supply chains, companies have to actively participate in both structural collaboration and information exchanges. Because of that, the collaboration has to be understood in some possible connections in a firm's structures as well as among firms in a supply chain. Besides, Maccoby [50] had explained three kinds of collaboration: 1. Across departments, in which experts collaborated, both in simultaneous and concurrent, either to decide something or solve targeted problems. 2. Within a department, in which collaboration might give the impression like an old-fashioned definition of teamwork. 3. Collaboration among business institutions that is ranged from a simple coproduction to inter-organization linkages. Furthermore, in any occurrence, a collaboration required media as the bridge of communication. The information exchange had to be accommodated through appropriate ways to seamlessly implement both decision making as well as problem solving [2, 6]. In fact, several multinational companies such as Ford and Toyota had underlined the importance of their SRM. Each of them had developed a self-regulating supply chain, meaning that high-level secrecy of confidential data could be effectively pursued. However, even though they have done it all, they still have to deal with the possibility in which one or more of their employees (intentionally or not) might leak their internal secrecies. Such phenomenon was recognized as an unfortunate fact which was experienced by Apple. On the other hand, there are possibilities in which some negative issues WIT Transactions on Information and Communication Technologies, Vol. 53, 0 2014 WIT Press www.witpress.com, ISSN 1743-3517 (on-line)


might be first disseminated by competitors, and then the issues had already been massively circulated and could not be clearly stopped by the targeted company. It is possible that the issue has hit the company's supply chain at the weakest point where corporate control is in low state due to difficult control in a long supply chain. 2.3 Social media Many researchers including Hongtao [51], Frohlich [52], Robinson et al. [53], and Fiala [54] had shown the same intention to believe that humans—then companies—would be significantly and seamlessly connected by investing in technology. For example, Rodriguez et al. [55] noted that current advances of IT in supply chain had allowed managers to gather traced records of the customers purchasing behavior. In this fast-growing Internet technology era, social media came up and had become a new way to uniquely connect many people through World Wide Web. Kaplan and Haenlein [56] had defined the term social media as "a group of Internet-based applications that build on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0 and that allow the creation and exchange of user-generated content." Furthermore, Short et al. [57] explained the social media concerning its media-related facets. They aimed to see from the perspective of social presence theory in which every kind of media diverge in the degree of "social presence" they allowed to arise in between two or more communication partners. Moreover, Kaplan and Haenlein [56] said that such presence is intensely affected by the immediacy and intimacy of medium, is expected to be lesser for mediated than interpersonal, and for asynchronous than synchronous medium of communications. Ashcroft [23] and Sianipar et al. [58] had listed the potential use of social media in several business areas, such as advertising, customer/sales support, monitoring/management, technical support/service, brand/reputation internal/external communications, business process reengineering, and continuous improvement. Many facts have ever been reviewed to exhibit some successful implementations of social media in business processes, that is, between farmers in India [26]. Although the reviews that the use of social media among Indian farmers were very impressive, in the fact they still treated social media through a static approach, meaning that they preferred to use static communication medium such as email rather than dynamic ones. When they were suggested to change the media, they only moved their email activities into another media. In 2011, Kietzmann et al. [59] had constructed the characteristics embedded in every social media as seven functional building blocks (Table 1). These building blocks were stated as "neither mutually exclusive, nor do they all have to be present in a social media activity". They stated that each block allows managers to disassemble and observe: 1. a specific facet of social media user experience and 2. its implications for firms



Table 1: Functional Building Blocks of Social Media. Adapted from Kietzmann et al. [59]. Social Media Functionality Implications of the Functionality The extent to which users ... Data privacy controls, and tools Identity ...reveal themselves for users self-promotion ...communicate with each Conversation velocity, and the Conversations other risks of starting and joining ...exchange, distribute, and Content management system and Sharing receive content social graph Creating and managing ...know if others are Presence immediacy, intimacy, and reality available of related context Managing the structural and flow Relationships ...relate each other properties in a network of relationships Monitoring the passion, sentiment, ...know the social standing Reputation strength, and reach of users and of others and content brands ...are ordered or form Groups Membership rules and protocols communities Building Blocks

Although it was clear that social media had become very powerful, managers were unable or might be reluctant to establish strategic approach and to allocate sufficient resources to effectively engage their business with social media. Thus, in particular area like CRM, firms regularly mismanaged or might ignore many prospects and pressures addressed by creative consumers [60]. One recognized reason behind such incompetence was the lack of understanding on what social media were and would be, including any various form they could become [56].

3 Research framework In fact, brief review on research literatures regarding the relationship between social media and supply chain found only rare contributions [61]. Based on the above exploration, the following theoretical framework (Table 2) is constructed to be the basis of discussion on the use of social media in the SCM by which the research questions would be answered. The supply chain is viewed through its three big fragments: SRM, ISCM, and CRM. The potential human collaboration through the integration of social media into SCM has to be examined based on seven functional building blocks of social media [59]: identity, conversations, sharing, presence, relationships, reputation, and groups. The examination processes directly integrate the blocks without WIT Transactions on Information and Communication Technologies, Vol. 53, 0 2014 WIT Press www.witpress.com, ISSN 1743-3517 (on-line)


Table 2: Theoretical Framework. across departments within a department between as well as among companies

SRM

ISCM

CRM

identity, conversations, sharing, presence, relationships, reputation, groups having point-to-point discussions for each blocks. The collaboration itself is then analyzed in three levels previously reviewed: across departments, within a department, and between as well as among companies. This study uses literature survey to explore issues and concept surrounding the main idea. The first section explains about the issues and opportunities this study wants to address. Through comparison of several existing cases, opportunities filled by social media are examined to get the possibility of the social media integration into SCM. Then, the second section reviews the existing literature of SCM and social media, and the collaboration among supply chain members. The expected result is the theoretical framework that is then taken as the guidance in understanding the integration of social media into SCM. The following sections are used to discuss the integration of social media based on the theoretical framework. Several rule of thumbs are also proposed to be the basic guidance for any company to apply the result of this study. Last section will gather the findings in this study into several propositions. Then, other researchers can extend or develop further researches by referring to this study. Insights for possible research focuses are exhibited in the final section to trigger initial ideas.

4 Discussion and proposals 4.1 Social media integration The integration of social media into SCM has to be started from the holistic perspective of supply chain. In any case, social media carries its five types of people engagement into SCM [23]: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

Listening and communication Learning and improvement Together implement changes Team spirit and camaraderie (friendship) Value of individual and voice

Croson and Donohue [62] and Pramatari and Miliotis [63] have reported that collaboration, enabled by information sharing, could possibly improve the performance of a supply chain. Furthermore, any information transmitted across supply chain through social media as the communication medium has to be



carefully managed. The reason is, management has to carefully deal with the classification of information access, meaning that management has to clearly distinguish between information that could be freely accessed and ones which could only be accessed by limited number of persons. Focal company has to have additional efforts in order to ensure the destination of every information. The CEO may have a private blog, a Facebook page, or may use company blog as the medium to spread any news or statement which is tightly related with the whole business. Nokia was a good example when its executives utilized an internal wiki site to spread the daily message to all of its employees. Other examples are Hasnul Suhaimi's (CEO of XL-Axiata) at http://www.hasnulsuhaimi.com or Aburizal Bakrie's (Owner of Bakrie Group) private blog at http://icalbakrie.com/. They use blog to share their personal opinions, live stories, activities, etc. For executives like them, every statement can trigger an impact in respective company valuation. Based on those facts, they have to filter their word choices before being published or by controlling the viewer access for any chosen person who have interest on the post content. Between leaders of SRM—ISCM—CRM, there is an opportunity to connect them through social media. Because not all information could be freely accessed by outsiders, the virtual forum or network would become an advantage to exchange any internal information classified as critical ones with the previous as well as following chains without breaking the company's secrecy policies. For example, a focal company produces several machines in which the components are supplied by different suppliers. The machines are produced based on the order from an end-customer. It means that the end-toend supply chain will active when a customer orders a machine. At a time, apparently an operator of the raw materials in the supplier's supplier factory clicks a button which is similar to Facebook's like button —in this case, it is associated with an "unlike" purpose—to inform any related internal staff about a potential production delay, meaning that the "unlike" activity sends information regarding the raw material supply for a component that would delay for few days. Such notion would trigger the change of many planned activities. At nearly the same time, the internal data regarding such information in supplier's supplier intranet cannot be accessed by the focal company; however, by using social media, the leader of related places in which further delay will possibly happen can write a note tagged to the leaders of following chains or maybe to several predecessors. The information are transmitted using short note like tweet yet filtered based on the role of each destined person. The filter can utilize tag feature associated with a unique personal identity for each tag. It must be noted that the set of processes is done at nearly the same time. When the case happens, the responsible leader directly spreads the information. The destined persons will know the problem in a minimum time delay, so they can work almost concurrently to rearrange the schedules in each related party. Because of the possible delay in the focal company, the leader of focal company will make a short note through social media to the leaders of other component suppliers. The information will be followed up by the change of production schedules in each supplier. Information exchanges will also be



forwarded to the CRM groups. The customer will know the change of delivery time of their order—the machine—hence they will calculate their risks. The fast information exchanges supported by the accuracy of informed destination will increase the agility of supply chain. When the rearrangements are applied into supply chain in no time after the main delay happen, other component suppliers can shift their focus to other jobs in order to keep their inventory at a minimum level. Although focal company can wait until component delivery time, they have to shift their focus to keep the plant productivity up as well as to maintain the component stock at the balanced amount. The information dissemination throughout a supply chain also increases the opportunity for each respective company to keep its reputation and of course decreases the opportunity of black campaign from competitors. It can possibly happen because the supply chain has prevented the wild escape of critical information before it can be used by any competitor to hit the focal company through a weak point in its supply chain. Although the competitors still spread some negative issues, the impact can surely be managed due to the strong collaboration across the supply chain through social media. In short, the integration of social media into SCM can increase the capability to do risk identification, give early warning for any critical condition, and provide a realtime monitoring on their working activities. The discussion on the integration of social media from the whole supply chain perspective has clearly shown the opportunities in global phenomena. In order to understand its deeper integration into SCM, the basic understanding has to be clear in which social media can meet the functional area of supply chain. In this study, the integration process is proposed as having three phases (Table 3), namely Use (phase 1), Integrate (phase 2), and Networked Value (phase 3). "Use" phase is defined as the phase in which SCM starts to use social media in some particular activities, such as marketing or sales. The implementations are limited due to the condition in which firms have not yet build a formal policy to integrate social media into their supply chains. The second phase, namely "Integrate," refers to the phase in which firms have already established their policies in integrating social media into SCM. Social media is widely used across a supply chain to exchange information between specific sender and receiver in as fast as possible timeline. Hence, every individual in supply chain can be connected based on their role and responsibility. The "Networked Value" phase is the last phase. It happens when social media is not only integrated into business activities, yet deeper into the personal value of every employee. The less restricted but responsible connection through social media in a supply chain is personal taken to construct the value networking. Each employee has to be responsible for any behavior and only by a networked value all employees can bring a good corporate value. The value of each employee is networked to other ones in order to pursue a universal work spirit, so it guarantees the sustainability of companies throughout a supply chain. Those phases happen in every functional area of a supply chain, so they will automatically change the behavior of each functional area when the integration process moves from one phase to the next phase(s).


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Table 3: Integration Phases of Social Media into SCM. Supply Chain

Functional Area

Phase 1 "Use"

Design

Monitor real-time changes and then develop supply plan based on the report

Planning

Minimum alignment across chains to develop supply chain planning

Inventory Management

Sales/Custome r Service

Focal Company

Outbond Logistics

Sourcing

Logistics Planning, Execution, Warehouse Management

Inbound Logistics

Procurement

Sales and After-Market Services

Scheduling

Negotiate parts bidding through realtime web service

Manual. Monitoring and feedback is based on the psychological condition of employees

Use social media but limited treatment to inventory as an independent business process Reactive customer service, active social connection is decided based on customer order

Phase 2 "Integrate"

Phase 3 "Networked Value"

Integrate demand Collaborative forecasting, planning, planning, and forecasting, and scheduling through replenishment continuous feedbacks Greater cooperation Collaborative with customer scheduling service. Strong alignment among chains in supply chain planning Integrated cross- Develop strategic functional cooperation with decisions, supplier- supplier, focal leaders continuous connection through relationship and social media feedbacks Company build Every operator specific policy to have self awareness guide the operator to monitor and give procedure feedback from every logistics planning, execution, and warehouse management Connect inventory Vendor-managed management with inventory, customer, leveling collaborative inventory policies replenishment, and dynamic network with customer service levels optimization Customer service Proactive CRM, levels is influenced build personally by continuous offer social connection from company to to the customer the customer

One crucial thing in integrating social media into SCM is the skills of employees. Every phase has its own focus, so related employees have to develop their skills to increase their suitability in the new environment. The first phase requires a narrow and more functional behavior in a reactive way. Connection is established through social media, but soft skills are not posited as becoming a critical requirement in such phase. Next phase, "Integrate," requires the business to increase its breadth of interfunctional knowledge across multiple business processes. Employees have to use social media not only to connect themselves to WIT Transactions on Information and Communication Technologies, Vol. 53, 0 2014 WIT Press www.witpress.com, ISSN 1743-3517 (on-line)


others ones but also integrate social media into their activities. Company policy is critical in guiding this kind of integration. The ability to lead and work in efficiently virtual cross-functional teams and also effective communication through social media which result in agile follow up, are increasingly important. The last phase focuses on how business must build broader collaboration around business processes across its supply chain that extends beyond the connection between firms to their key customers and suppliers. 4.2 Framework and rule of thumbs It is clear that social media could be possibly integrated in every supply chain to take its full advantage in connecting people. First, the integration has to accommodate the integration within supply chain itself. All of the four sequential phases treated as the natural characteristics in supply chain integration can be further simplified into three most important ideas that have to be combined with the integration of social media to reach the collaboration, networked values, which is beyond common integration. Such ideas are: 1. all business interests in the supply chain networks have to be connected and elaborated in providing any service, product, and information. 2. two-ways direct relations and extended partnerships with all customers and suppliers along supply chain. 3. organized flow of information, decisions, and resources. Then, after several reviews, comparisons, and examinations, it can be stated that companies require a conceptual framework exhibiting the integration of social media into their SCM. The framework (Table 4) is proposed to accommodate any potential and possible aspect related to SCM and social media to get a smooth integration. Furthermore, the following rules have to be carefully taken in the pursuit of achieving successful integration. First, firms have to examine their potential capabilities in adapting a new technology which can result in a new working environment. Next, firms have to integrate social media through the design of supply chain itself. It is not limited to the adaptation of social media into all departments as well as across business processes. The partial use of social media can result in the high cost but low productivity. Finns have to understand the reasons why social media cannot be straightly integrated into the whole supply chain. Each social media has its uniquely embedded functional blocks, so firms have to develop several supporting decisions to move from one phase to the next phase of integration.

5 Conclusion: toward an integrated human collaboration Social media has significantly changed the way people connect themselves to other ones. The phenomenon of globalization and the rapid development of information technologies have supported them to get and give information from/to many sources/resources in almost unlimited possibilities regarding the



Table 4: Framework to Integrate Social Media into SCM. CRM

Across departments 1.all business interests in the supply chain networks Within a have to be connected and elaborated in providing department any service, product, and information Between as 2. two-ways direct relations and extended partnerships well as among with all customers and suppliers along supply chain companies 3. organized flow of information, decisions, and resources Phase 1 2 3 Supply Chain Design Retail and Inbound Focal Outbond Sourcing AfterLogistics Company Logistics Marker Service Planning Scheduling

2rouns

ISCM

Lions, sharing, presence, relationships, reputation,

SRM

Procurement Logistics Planning and Execution, Warehouse Management Inventory Management Sales/Customer Service use of social media. Firms through their SCM have to establish the engagement between them and the society, including internal ones such as between them and their employees. Good collaboration between interconnected parties, even if in a long supply chain, requires a structured application of the proposed rule of thumbs in the integration of social media into SCM. Although there are coincidences in which at the same time one or more company—for example, a supplier—is connected to several supply chains consisting many competing focal companies, such good collaboration will strengthen the prevention of any bad impact imposed by uncontrolled dissemination of counterproductive information. On the other hand, social media also carries some possible positive impacts to the interaction of related parties in SCM's particular area. For example, in supplier relationship management (SRM), social media could expose some substantial opportunities to connect several suppliers in a supply chain without trailing the business secrecies of each company. Furthermore, social media brings potential good implications by improving the human collaboration in ISCM. Behavioral dynamics of its employees could be smoothly guided due to the good social



approaches from the respective company. Moreover, in CRM, social media could also strengthen the engagement of customers to the share interests between them and supply chain. The social aspects naturally embedded in social media bring supply chain into a deeper relationship with society. In short, social media could increase the closeness of whole supply chain system to people throughout the chains. Human as the main actor in a supply chain would become more responsible to their individual as well as integrative roles all over an end-to-end supply chain. The proposed integration phases of social media into SCM have made companies need to understand the characteristics of SCM, embedded functional building blocks of social media, and the potential effects of new environment. Any firm has to adapt the social media into all business processes, in which they must pay attention to the integration phases of social media into supply chain as well as the integration phase of supply chain itself. Finally, a supply chain that has reached the third phase of social media integration can completely expect that the integration of social media into SCM would really help the management to: (1) tighten the collaboration across supply chain; (2) increase the agile responses of related companies in a supply chain due to unexpected events; (3) avoid any possible supply chain's weak point due to oversized scale of an end-to-end chain; and (4) manage any bad impact due to counterproductive issues which have hit one or more possible entrance points in a supply chain.

6 Insights for further research This study requires extended or expanded researches by conducting studies on the development of social media integration into SCM in specific cases. The effects and impacts may be different in different cases, so this study can be used as the basis understanding for further research. The platform may include all of the integration phases which have been previously explained. Another research may construct another framework for evaluating the impact of social media integration into SCM. Furthermore, an Index will be required to detect the impact in real time. Besides, another modeling can show the prediction of dynamic behavior in supply chain on human interaction through social media. Moreover, further research may develop a new social media platform for supply chain. The platform may also be patented and developed as new business fields.

Acknowledgments C.P.M.S. would like to acknowledge the comments and corrections from his great advisor as well as an expert in the supply chain area of expertise: Prof. Togar M. Simatupang, on earlier versions of this paper.

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