Bringing Together Risk, Finance, and Supply Chain Operations
This time, I want to share with you an interesting interview with ManMohan Sodhi, Professor of Operations and Supply Chain Management at Cass Business School, City University, London.
Reflective and Formative Measurement Models
From time to time, I present insightful methodological articles on this blog. Today’s post is dedicated to an article by Edwards (2011): The fallacy of formative measurement (ORM, Vol. 14, No. 2). The article critically compares reflective and formative measurement, i.e., two optional directions of the relationship between constructs and measures in empirical research. Reflective measurement treats “constructs as causes of measures, such that measures are reflective manifestations of underlying constructs”, whereas formative measurement specifies “measures as causes of constructs, such that measures form or induce an underlying latent variable”. The article “compares reflective and formative measurement on the basis of dimensionality, internal consistency, identification, measurement error, construct validity, and causality”. It turns out that Edwards takes a negative stance towards formative measurement. Particularly, Edwards argues that “formative measurement is not a viable alternative to reflective measurement”. Edwards’s article was among the best paper winners of Organizational Research Methods in 2011.
Edwards, J.R. (2011). The Fallacy of Formative Measurement. Organizational Research Methods, 14 (2), 370-388 https://10.1177/1094428110378369
SCM Best Paper Award Winners 2012 (2/2)
Three more SCM-related journals have announced the winners of best paper awards. First, the Journal of Operations Management has awarded the Jack Meredith Best Paper Award to Speier and her co-authors for their article Global supply chain design considerations: Mitigating product safety and security risks. Second, the Journal of Supply Chain Management has chosen the winner of the 2011 Harold E. Fearon Best Paper Award. The winner is Information technology as an enabler of supply chain collaboration: A dynamic-capabilities perspective by Fawcett et al.; other finalists are Making sense of supply disruption risk research: A conceptual framework grounded in enactment theory by Ellis et al. and Managing buyer–supplier relationships: Empirical patterns of strategy formulation in industrial purchasing by Terpend et al. Third, the article Interorganizational system characteristics and supply chain integration: An empirical assessment by Saeed et al. was selected as the best paper published in the Decision Sciences Journal in 2010-2011. (part 1/2)
Speier, C. et al. (2011). Global supply chain design considerations: Mitigating product safety and security risks. Journal of Operations Management, 29 (7-8), 721-736 DOI: 10.1016/j.jom.2011.06.003
Fawcett, S. et al. (2011). Information technology as an enabler of supply chain collaboration: A dynamic-capabilities perspective. Journal of Supply Chain Management, 47 (1), 38-59 DOI: 10.1111/j.1745-493X.2010.03213.x
Saeed, K. et al. (2011). Interorganizational system characteristics and supply chain integration: An empirical assessment. Decision Sciences, 42 (1), 7-42 DOI: 10.1111/j.1540-5915.2010.00300.x
Logistics Clusters (Guest Post by Yossi Sheffi, MIT)
Logistics clusters play an increasingly important part in logistics & supply chain management. I am happy to share the following guest post by Professor Yossi Sheffi, a distinguished expert in logistics clusters. Thank you for contributing to my blog.
Logistics clusters are agglomerations of firms that come together to share logistics expertise and know-how. As I argue in my new book Logistics Clusters: Delivering Value and Driving Growth (MIT Press, October 2012), these entities have a number of unique, and generally underestimated, attributes. First, they are self-reinforcing in that logistics clusters use the high volumes of freight they generate to capture economies of scope and scale and reduce costs while improving service quality. These benefits attract more companies, which in turn bring further efficiencies within reach. Second, resident companies use the cluster to pool expertise and equipment, which buffers them against fluctuations in demand. Third, logistics clusters are major creators of employment opportunities that tend not to be “offshorable” and not tied to the fortunes of any one industry. Finally, these entities are building considerable expertise in environmental sustainability. These are some of the reasons why I believe that the private and public sectors need to invest more in logistics clusters.
Yossi Sheffi is a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he serves as Director of the MIT Center for Transportation & Logistics.
