The Downside of SCM Journal Rankings
When analyzing the statistics of this blog, I find that SCM researchers appear to be very interested in posts concerning journal rankings, namely the quantitative journal ranking based on impact factors and qualitative rankings such as VHB-JOURQUAL or the ABS Academic Journal Guide 2018. I would not have published them if I wasn’t sure journal rankings can be beneficial for our research community. However, after an inspiring discussion with Alan McKinnon last week about his new article, Starry-eyed: Journal Rankings and the Future of Logistics Research (published in IJPDLM), I am more than ever convinced that our community should both acknowledge advantages and regard disadvantages of such rankings. Indeed, the ranking of journals “can skew the choice of research methodology, lengthen publication lead times, cause academics to be disloyal to the specialist journals in their field, favour theory over practical relevance and unfairly discriminate against relatively young disciplines such as logistics”, as Alan finds in his paper. So, what is your opinion?
McKinnon, Alan C. (2013). Starry-eyed: Journal Rankings and the Future of Logistics Research. International Journal of Physical Distribution & Logistics Management, 43 (1), 6-17 https://doi.org/10.1108/09600031311293228
Reputation Risk in the Supply Chain
Recently, Oxford Metrica, an analytics and advisory firm which has been “studying the relationship between reputation and value for nearly two decades”, has issued its Reputation Review 2012, which was sponsored by Aon Corporation. Herein, the major reputation events in 2011 are reviewed and the lessons learned are extracted. Most importantly for us, the report contains some interesting examples of reputation risk in the supply chain. Particularly, the authors examine the 2011 earthquake in Japan and “pursue the earthquake theme through the knock-on reputation effects as the disruption of the earthquake reverberated through the global supply chain in Japan, Korea and further afield”. The report highlights that loss of a key customer or disruption at a key supplier can cause reputation challenges at one’s own firm. I believe that reputation risk inherent in the supply chain, as discussed in the report, is an often overlooked aspect of supply chain risk management.
SCM Best Paper Award Winners 2012 (1/2)
I have attended the CSCMP’s Supply Chain Management Educators’ Conference (SCMEC) in Atlanta. The conference offers a unique opportunity to meet many researchers, whose faces are obscured behind references for the rest of the year. As last year in Philadelphia, several SCM journal award winners were announced: The best papers published in the International Journal of Physical Distribution & Logistics Management and the International Journal of Logistics Management are “Supply Chain 2.0”: Managing supply chains in the era of turbulence by Christopher and Holweg, and An institutional theoretic perspective on forces driving adoption of lean production globally: China vis-à-vis the USA by Hofer and her three co-authors, respectively. The Bernard J. LaLonde Best Paper Award (best paper published in the Journal of Business Logistics) goes to Top-down versus bottom-up demand forecasts: The value of shared point-of-sale data in the retail supply chain by Williams and Waller. Enjoy reading these outstanding articles! (part 2/2)
