Archive | November 2013

Angora Wool

Last week, a shocking video, created by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), was published. The images cast a dark shadow over global garment supply chains. In response, brands like H&M and C&A halted manufacturing of items containing Angora wool. This case, again, demonstrates the importance of ethical aspects in supply chain management.

Logistics and Supply Chain Management in Africa

As you might know, I had the great opportunity to travel to East Africa several times, where I gave logistics and supply chain management lectures (see my previous post). In spite of a lot of desperation, I was somewhat heartened by many developments I observed. Indeed, although Africa – a continent with more than one billion people – certainly faces huge challenges, the situation is changing rapidly. In a new pwc report, Africa Gearing Up, future prospects in Africa for logistics and supply chain management are described. Herein, the authors focus their discussion on ten selected economies: Algeria, Angola, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Egypt, Ghana, Kenya, Mozambique, Nigeria, South Africa and Tanzania. They shed light on the “demographic and economic situation, the frameworks in each country for trade and business and their transport infrastructure”. This report will help companies better analyze these future markets and understand both risks and opportunities.

Introducing the Journal of Operations Management (Guest Post by the Editors-in-Chief)

In today’s guest post, Thomas Y. Choi and Daniel Guide, Editors-in-Chief of the Journal of Operations Management, provide an introduction to their journal, which is a leading journal of our field.

The Journal of Operations Management (JOM) is an empirical journal whose mission is to advance the theories of operations management (OM) and supply chain management (SCM). The goal is to publish original, high quality, OM and SCM empirical research that will have a significant impact on theory and practice. Regular articles accepted for publication in JOM must have clear implications for operations managers based on one or more of a variety of rigorous research methodologies. It is the premier ranked journal, repeatedly ranked above other journals in the discipline. It is one of the OM-SCM focused empirical journals used by both the Financial Times in its rankings of Business Schools as well as by the University of Texas at Dallas in its assessment of scholarship. In terms of citation share, in 2011 JOM was given the following ISI category ranking: 1/73 in “Operations Research & Management Science” and 7/166 in “Management”. The current impact factor (IF) is 4.40 and the five year IF is 7.13.

Thomas Y. Choi is a Professor of Supply Chain Management at the W. P. Carey School of Business, Arizona State University. Daniel Guide is a Professor of Supply Chain Management at the Smeal College of Business, Pennsylvania State University. They have published their research in numerous academic and managerial journals.

SCM Best Paper Award Winners 2013 (2/2)

Three more leading journals of our field have announced the winners of their best paper awards. First, the Decision Sciences Journal has selected the article Managing Differentiation-Integration Duality in Supply Chain Integration by Terjesen, Patel and Sanders for its Best Paper Award for 2012. Second, the article The Competitive Determinants of a Firm’s Environmental Management Activities: Evidence from US Manufacturing Industries by Hofer, Cantor and Dai has won the Journal of Operations Management Jack Meredith Best Paper Award. Finally, the judges for the 2012 Harold E. Fearon Best Paper Award were evenly split between two articles. Therefore, the Journal of Supply Chain Management has announced two winning articles: Supply Chain-Wide Consequences of Transaction Risks and Their Contractual Solutions: Towards an Extended Transaction Cost Economics Framework by Wever, Wognum, Trienekens and Omta, and Who Owns the Customer? Disentangling Customer Loyalty in Indirect Distribution Channels by Eggert, Henseler and Hollmann. Congratulations to all winners! (part 1/2)

Terjesen, S., Patel, P.C., & Sanders, N.R. (2012). Managing Differentiation-Integration Duality in Supply Chain Integration. Decision Sciences, 43 (2), 303-339 DOI: 10.1111/j.1540-5915.2011.00345.x

Hofer, C., Cantor, D.E., & Dai, J. (2012). The Competitive Determinants of a Firm’s Environmental Management Activities: Evidence from US Manufacturing Industries. Journal of Operations Management, 30 (1–2), 69-84 DOI: 10.1016/j.jom.2011.06.002

Wever, M., Wognum, P.M., Trienekens, J.H., & Omta, S.W.F. (2012). Supply Chain-Wide Consequences of Transaction Risks and Their Contractual Solutions: Towards an Extended Transaction Cost Economics Framework. Journal of Supply Chain Management, 48 (1), 73-91 DOI: 10.1111/j.1745-493X.2011.03253.x

Eggert, A., Henseler, J., & Hollmann, S. (2012). Who Owns the Customer? Disentangling Customer Loyalty in Indirect Distribution Channels. Journal of Supply Chain Management, 48 (2), 75-92 DOI: 10.1111/j.1745-493X.2011.03260.x