Building Theory in the SCM Field

The Journal of Supply Chain Management has published an interesting forum that discusses the conceptual theory development approach within the context of our discipline. In his introducing essay, the co-editor-in-chief Craig C. Carter describes the JSCM’s perspective/philosophy towards conceptual theory development and introduces guidelines for both authors and reviewers. Choi and Wacker examine selected papers over a time period of the last 10 years to reveal good theory-building practices. Ketchen and Hult observe that powerful tools for guiding the theory building process have been developed within the organizational sciences, but have not yet found widespread application within our field. They describe several of these tools and explain how they can be used to enhance theory building within SCM. In her article, Rindova emphasizes the process through which ideas develop into a value-added theoretical contribution. Finally, Skilton’s essay discusses the process of developing theory during the review process for conceptual articles in contrast to empirical articles.