In: Operations Management
the merits and demerits of using internal and external agents
Solution:
The use of external agents for accomplishing a certain task within an organization is a practice that is being followed by companies for ages and this is why this practice is still very much prevalent in the market today because of various benefits associated with such a type of agent. We will discuss some of the merits and demerits of using external and internal agents.
External agents provide us with an unbiased point of view. For any organization, it is very essential to have an unbiased view of the situation to help make an appropriate business decision. External agents are thus very much valued by the organization because of the diverse opinion they bring to the table. External agents are preferred because it is easy to deal with their contract employment rather than full payroll employment which can be costly. Hence, external agents provide the organization with much-needed flexibility and help them save on their costs. Some of the demerits of external agents in that we may not completely be sure of the efforts put by the external agent to provide the solution because of the lack of entitlement to the organization. External agents can also b hard to manage because one needs to make them understand the business practices as well. These are some of the cons of external agents.
Internal agents are preferred when the tasks at hand require a deep experience of working within the organization. Thus, in such a situation the internal agents are preferred over external agents because of lack of appropriate experience and knowledge with the external agents. Hence, this is a big benefit of internal agents. The demerits of internal agents are that their point of view may become biased and creativity may become stagnant due to repetitive work for continuous period of time. Hence, this is a big demerit of the internal agents for the organization.
Hence, this is a overview of the merits and demerits of the internal and external agents.