CDP Supply Chain Report 2012
Supply chain thinking enables managers to understand that indirect greenhouse gas emissions (i.e., those from the supply chain) often represent the lion’s share of a company’s total emissions. The Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) has now published its Supply Chain Report 2012. CDP Supply Chain members are about 50 companies who are requesting climate information from their suppliers. The report reveals that a majority of these companies reward “suppliers that employ good carbon-management practices” and that many of these companies will soon begin to deselect suppliers, if they don’t adopt such measures. Moreover, these companies increasingly factor climate change into the evaluation of suppliers. It has been found that many companies have benefited both from own emission reduction activities and from their supplier’s reduction activities. The report warns that suppliers will soon “see their business move to competitors that can provide better information and clearer evidence of change”, if they do not measure, quantify, and manage their greenhouse gas emissions.
Supply chain management: A content analysis
I just read an article by Vallet-Bellmunt et al. (2011): Supply chain management: A multidisciplinary content analysis of vertical relations between companies, 1997–2006. It gives a good overview of SCM research published in journals related to marketing, logistics, management, and marketing channels. The authors find that the work type of most research is empirical in nature, primary information is used more often than secondary information, the information type is mostly quantitative in nature, studies are mainly explanatory-predictive, the period of time in which the research is carried out is mostly cross-sectional, the geographical area is mainly national, and manufacturing samples are used most often. Particularly, the article confirms my suspicion that there is “shortage of studies conducted on the supply chain as a network of enterprises“. Instead, most research turns out to focus on a single enterprise or on the relationships of a single enterprise with its suppliers or customers.
The end of SCM in China?
Previous studies about SCM in China have highlighted that uncertainty in the supply chain can be reduced by process flexibility, information sharing, and process integration. However, a new study by Roland Berger Strategy Consultants, titled The end of the China cycle?, warns that “the value proposition for many firms in China is disappearing as the competitive cost advantage is beginning to erode relative to other countries” and that “government policy and social issues are further compounding the complexity of doing business in China”. The authors argue that some industries in China have already passed the tipping point. As China is in transition towards high-value add manufacturing, firms need to rethink the strategy of their manufacturing footprints. Supply chain managers will continue to face volatility and uncertainty, also in China, but the new study demonstrates that managers can seize the opportunity right now. However, the Chinese window is closing quickly.
Common-method variance
In their interesting article, A tale of three perspectives: Examining post hoc statistical techniques for detection and correction of common method variance, Richardson et al. (2009) define common-method variance (CMV) as “systematic error variance shared among variables measured with and introduced as a function of the same method and/or source”. Post-hoc techniques promise help, if the research design does not allow the independent and dependent variables to use data from different methods and sources. Richardson et al. evaluate (1) the correlational marker, (2) the confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) marker, and (3) the unmeasured latent method construct (ULMC) techniques. Interestingly, they find that only the CFA marker technique appears to have some practical value, but “recommend the CFA marker technique be used only as a means for providing evidence about the presence of CMV and only when researchers can be reasonably confident they have used an ideal marker”. A good description of the CFA marker technique can be found in an article by Williams et al. (2010).
Transaction cost economics vs. supply chain management
When Oliver E. Williamson published his article Outsourcing: Transaction cost economics and supply chain management (2008), he confronted SCM research with uncomfortable questions. Surprisingly, it took more than three years until the first SCM researcher, Paul Zipkin, published A Reply to Williamson’s “Outsourcing …” (forthcoming in Production and Operations Management). Some of them may be provoking, but we should not brush aside the questions raised by Williamson. For example, he states that the “unit of analysis for TCE is the transaction” and asks: “The corresponding unit of analysis for SCM is what?” Zipkin rightly states: “We may be eclectic, but no one can accuse us of being parochial”. But this should be no excuse for us to ignore that our unit of analysis is the supply and demand network. Williamson reminds us that SCM research needs its paradigm. We need a consistent theory of the supply chain rather than eclectically adjusting theories that actually describe other units of analysis.
Interorganizational Relationships
I wish to call attention to an article by Parmigiani and Rivera-Santos, which was recently published in the Journal of Management: Clearing a path through the forest: A meta-review of interorganizational relationships. The authors conduct a review of reviews (meta-review) that were concerned with forms (i.e., alliances, joint ventures, buyer–supplier agreements, licensing, co-branding, franchising, cross-sector partnerships, and networks) and theories (i.e., organizational economics and organization theory) of interorganizational relationships. The authors also propose that any interorganizational relationship combines “traits from two hypothetical, pure relationship forms”: co-exploration and co-exploitation. The former aims to “create new knowledge, tasks, functions, or activities”, whereas the latter aims to “execute existing knowledge, tasks, functions, or activities”. This framework really clears a path through the forest, in which specific theories or forms are the “trees” and the overall nature of these relationships is the “forest”. I believe that this path is interesting for many researchers in our field.
What is Supply Chain Management?
This is the first installment in Arizona State University’s twelve-part introduction to supply chain management video series.
ISBN, ISSN, and DOI
You probably know ISBN, which identifies a specific edition of a book. But do you know what ISSN and DOI are? Similar to the International Standard Book Number (ISBN) for books, the International Standard Serial Number (ISSN) is an identifier for serials and other continuing resources. For example, the online ISSN of the Journal of Business Logistics is 2158-1592. A digital object identifier (DOI) can be used to uniquely identify content objects in the digital environment, i.e. journal articles. A DOI can be resolved by entering it into a text box on the page http://dx.doi.org/ or by extending this URL: For instance, the page http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/259056 will redirect to the paper with the DOI 10.2307/259056. By the way, whenever I link to a book in this blog, I will extend the Wikipedia special page for book sources by the ISBN, e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/0136080405. This enables you to select your preferred bookseller rather than having Amazon pre-selected.
Supply Chain Resilience 2011
Volatility, demand swings, and supply uncertainty are SCM trends (I recently reported). One of my primary research interests is in the area of supply chain resilience and I was particularly curious when I got the report Supply Chain Resilience 2011 into my hands. It reveals that 85% of the organizations surveyed experienced at least one supply chain disruption in the last twelve months. Among the major sources of disruption are adverse weather, unplanned outage of IT or telecommunication systems, transport network disruption, failure in service provision by an outsourcer, and, not surprisingly, earthquake and/or tsunami. It is also found that the main consequences of disruption are loss of productivity, increased cost of working, loss of revenue, customer complaints, and impaired service outcome. Most importantly, the report reminds us that many disruptions originate below the immediate tier one supplier. Again, a supply chain is not a triad, but a complex and dynamic network and must be managed as such.
“Facebook for scientists”
I recently discovered ResearchGate, which is a Cambridge and Berlin based social network for researchers. It is described by its founders as “Facebook for scientists” and helps scientists to collaborate with colleagues and find new publications. ResearchGate has implemented workgroups, which are invitation-only. Own workgroups can be created in order to collaborate in a closed and secure environment. “ResearchGate was built for scientists, by scientists, with the idea that science can do more when it’s driven by collaboration.” This ResearchGate slogan reminds a little of supply chain management. Over 1 million researchers have already joined this service, tens of thousands of documents have been uploaded, and thousands of subgroups have been formed. So far, ResearchGate is particularly popular in the fields of biology and medicine. However, the topic Supply Chain Management has already more than 100 followers and a search for the keyword “supply chain” results in more than 500 researchers.
Andreas Wieland
