Emerald Literati Network Awards for Excellence 2015
Some time ago, the winners of the annual Emerald Literati Network Awards for Excellence 2015 have been presented. Here comes a selection of this year’s outstanding papers related to supply chain management: First of all, it is noteworthy that several award-winning papers deal with sustainability; this includes papers written by Eng-Larsson & Norrman, Fabbe-Costes et al., Griffin et al., Schaltegger & Burritt and Varsei et al.. But also other topics have been awarded several times, namely risk/resilience (Vilko et al. and Scholten et al.), logistics integration (Alam et al. and Mellat-Parast & Spillan) and supply chain strategy (Sharma & Bhat and Nag et al.). It is also interesting to see several multidisciplinary articles in this list, hereby linking supply chain management with areas such as human resources (Hohenstein et al.), marketing (Flint et al.) and strategic sourcing (Eltantawy et al.). Congratulations to all winners! (See also: Emerald Literati Network Awards for Excellence 2014.)
How to Write an Abstract
An abstract is maybe the most underestimated document of a journal submission. First, the editor will read it and use it as a criterion to decide whether she will give the submission a chance, hereby asking: “So what? Is this manuscript timely and relevant?” Second, the abstract is usually included in the invitation e-mail received by potential reviewers and typically the only part of the manuscript they can see before deciding for or against accepting the invitation. An abstract should, thus, not create a cognitive dissonance. Finally, an article can only be found by potential readers if the abstract contains proper search terms. Readers also use it to decide whether they will read the rest of the paper. More about abstracts can be found in Emerald’s How To Guide. The structure of Emerald’s abstracts is helpful even if a journal does not require a structured abstract: Simply remove the headlines (e.g., “Purpose”)!
The Smile of Value Creation
Mudambi (2008) notes that “value-added is becoming increasingly concentrated at the upstream and downstream ends of the value chain” and that “activities at both ends of the value chain are intensive in their application of knowledge and creativity”. Value-added along the value chain is, thus, represented by a “smiling curve”.
Mudambi, R. (2008). Location, Control and Innovation in Knowledge-intensive Industries. Journal of Economic Geography, 8 (5), 699-725 DOI: 10.1093/jeg/lbn024