Citations of Excellence Awards 2013
Some of you may remember my last year’s post about the 2012 Citations of Excellence Awards. A year has passed since and Emerald Management Reviews has now announced the winners of the 2013 Citation of Excellence Awards. I went through the list of 50 awarded papers and discovered two papers which I think are particularly relevant to our field. First, a paper by Lawson et al. (2009), Knowledge Sharing in Interorganizational Product Development Teams: The Effect of Formal and Informal Socialization Mechanisms, reveals that informal socialization mechanisms, including communication guidelines and social events, “play an important role in facilitating interorganizational knowledge sharing”. Second, a paper by Pagell and Wu (2009), Building a More Complete Theory of Sustainable Supply Chain Management Using Case Studies of 10 Exemplars, examines the supply chain as an entirety and builds “a coherent and testable model of the elements necessary to create a sustainable supply chain”. Congratulations to the winners of the awards.
Lawson, B., Petersen, K.J., Cousins, P.D., & Handfield, R.B. (2009). Knowledge Sharing in Interorganizational Product Development Teams: The Effect of Formal and Informal Socialization Mechanisms. Journal of Product Innovation Management, 26 (2), 156-172 DOI: 10.1111/j.1540-5885.2009.00343.x
Pagell, M., & Wu, Z. (2009). Building a More Complete Theory of Sustainable Supply Chain Management Using Case Studies of 10 Exemplars. Journal of Supply Chain Management, 45 (2), 37-56 DOI: 10.1111/j.1745-493X.2009.03162.x
Supply Chain Management and Bioinvasion
We all know that economic, ecological, social, and ethical aspects need to be considered when managing global supply chains. This includes topics such as resource scarcity, climate change, and labor conditions. So far, however, I did not associate bioinvasion with our field. This has changed now: An article by Seebens et al. (2013), recently published in Ecology Letters, discusses the risk of marine bioinvasion caused by global shipping. The authors argue that “the rate of biological invasions has strongly increased during the last decades, mostly due to the accelerated spread of species by increasing global trade and transport”. They demonstrate that forecasting of bioinvasions needs to take into account information about ballast water transport, biogeographic distribution, and environmental heterogeneity. Particularly, they identify “high-risk invasion routes, hot spots of bioinvasion and major source regions from which bioinvasion is likely to occur”. In sum, their model reveals a new aspect of ecological responsibility in supply chains.
Seebens, H., Gastner, M.T., & Blasius, B. (2013). The Risk of Marine Bioinvasion Caused by Global Shipping. Ecology Letters, 16 (6), 782-790 DOI: 10.1111/ele.12111
Toward a Theory of Supply Chain Management
We have to admit that there is still no such thing as a “theory of supply chain management”. A new article by Mena et al. (2013), titled Toward a Theory of Multi-Tier Supply Chain Management, might bring us one step closer to such a theory by taking into account that supply chains have become more complex, more fragmented and longer. This piece of research, which is based on an inductive case study research design, hands theory-testing researchers interesting propositions on a silver platter: First, depending on the supply chain position, the members of the supply chain draw power from different sources. Second, the buyer needs to connect directly with the supplier’s supplier (“closed supply chain”) to influence product characteristics. Third, with a growing degree of such a direct connection, power is increasingly replaced by trust. Finally, closed supply chains are more stable, but require more management resources.
Mena, C., Humphries, A., & Choi, T.Y. (2013). Toward a Theory of Multi-Tier Supply Chain Management. Journal of Supply Chain Management, 49 (2), 58-77 DOI: 10.1111/jscm.12003
Multi-item Scales Utilized in Logistics Research
A few months ago, I presented the Handbook of Management Scales, an online collection of previously used multi-item measurement scales (see post). Quite similar, the Journal of Business Logistics has now published a compendium of multi-item scales utilized in logistics research – a good complement to my collection. The authors, Keller et al. (2013), found that not less than 980 scales were used in four journals related to logistics (IJLM, IJPDLM, JBL, TJ) between 2001 and 2010. It is the merit of the authors to identify and document these scales in an electronic Appendix, which contains “a categorical listing of multi-item scales and the available information concerning the scales’ validity and reliability”. The Appendix is available as a Word document. One can only guess how tedious it was to prepare the compendium. In addition, the authors offer a comparison of scales categories, a comparison with previous results and a comparison between JBL and the Journal of Marketing.
Keller, S.B., Hochard, K., Rudolph, T., & Boden, M. (2013). A Compendium of Multi-Item Scales Utilized in Logistics Research (2001–10): Progress Achieved Since Publication of the 1973–2000 Compendium. Journal of Business Logistics, 34 (2) DOI: 10.1111/jbl.12011
