NOFOMA 2025 in Copenhagen
Join us from June 10-12, 2025 for the 37th NOFOMA 2025 Conference (in Copenhagen), the leading Nordic platform for logistics and supply chain management professionals. The conference kicks off with NORDLOG (for doctoral students) and the Educators’ Day (for educators) on June 10.
The Supply Chain: A System in Crisis
I am pleased to announce that our new book, The Supply Chain: A System in Crisis, co-edited with Stefan Gold, is now available. It contains very insightful chapters by fantastic colleagues. Our book highlights the multifaceted challenges facing modern supply chains. It examines the concept of a globalized economy, juxtaposing the promise of prosperity with the acute reality of worker exploitation and environmental harm.
Gold, S. & Wieland, A. (Eds.) (2024). The Supply Chain: A System in Crisis. Edward Elgar. ISBN 9781803924915
Theory as a Camera or Theory as an Engine
Is theory merely a camera through which we view the world, or can it be an engine that drives change within it? In our new Notes & Debates article in the Journal of Purchasing and Supply Management, Theory as an Engine: Illuminating “White Space” of the SCM System of Knowledge Production, we (with Dane Pflueger and Christopher S. Chapman) argue that while much of the SCM literature has treated theory as a camera that tries to capture the world as it is, there is untapped potential in using theory as an engine capable of transforming SCM practices and knowledge itself. We advocate the inclusion of diverse theoretical approaches. This could enrich the body of SCM knowledge and enable innovative and practical developments in the discipline. To make the different approaches understandable, we discuss examples of SCM-related articles that used theory as a camera and that used theory as an engine. We hope you enjoy reading our article.
Pflueger, D., Wieland, A., & Chapman, C.S. (2024). Theory as an Engine: Illuminating “White Space” of the SCM System of Knowledge Production. Journal of Purchasing and Supply Management, 100910. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pursup.2024.100910
Global Supply Chains Amplify Costs of Extreme Heat Risk
An impressive new study by Sun et al., Global Supply Chains Amplify Economic Costs of Future Extreme Heat Risk, just published in Nature, reveals a worrying escalation in global heatwaves, posing significant health and economic risks through increased mortality, reduced labor productivity, and widespread economic disruptions in supply chains. By integrating climate science, epidemiology, and economic modeling, the study predicts a substantial increase in annual global GDP losses, potentially reaching up to 4.6% by 2060, with the most severe impacts felt in developing countries and major manufacturing nations such as China and the United States. This comprehensive analysis underscores the disproportionate impact of heat stress across regions and sectors and highlights the urgent need for effective climate mitigation and adaptation strategies to minimize socio-economic impacts. The study suggests that advances in SCM research could play an important role in mitigating these economic losses by developing resilient strategies that adapt to the increasing frequency and severity of heatwaves.
Sun, Y., Zhu, S., Wang, D. et al. (2024). Global Supply Chains Amplify Economic Costs of Future Extreme Heat Risk. Nature. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-024-07147-z
A Truly Transformative SCM Master Program
Supply chain management (SCM) master’s programs often emphasize functional silos, as reflected in course titles such as “Operations Management” and “Logistics and Distribution Management”. While these traditional elements are important, they risk overlooking transformative perspectives necessary in the face of today’s global challenges. Supply chains are entwined with wicked problems like climate change, human and animal rights, and geopolitical tensions. Thus, the need to incorporate broader disciplines, such as geography, geopolitics, and earth science, is more critical than ever. Furthermore, exploring the history of globalization, studying supply chain laws, and understanding the circular economy can guide us toward sustainable and ethical practices. It is equally essential to study the role of digitalization in shaping global commerce. All these diverse elements should be woven into new narratives, embodying an integrated, holistic approach to SCM education. In this transformative era, social sciences and humanities hold the key to these narratives, playing an increasingly critical role in shaping future SCM professionals.
Teaching Case – Apple Inc: Global Supply Chain Management
Once again this year, an SCM-related teaching case received an award at the Case Center Awards and Competitions: It is entitled Apple Inc: Global Supply Chain Management and written by P. Fraser Johnson. In this case, students are placed in the role of Apple’s CEO Tim Cook, who has to make a strategic decision about the company’s complex supply chain. “Set in early 2020, it provides a detailed description of the company’s supply chain network and capabilities. Data in the case allows students to develop an understanding of Apple’s source of competitiveness and to gain insights into the management of a large, complex global supply chain network that focused on the intersection of services, hardware and software. Students will obtain an understanding of the supply chain challenges faced by Apple, in the context of supporting its corporate strategy and growth objectives.” I am sure that this case can be integrated very well into many undergraduate and postgraduate courses. This case nicely complements the 2020 award winner Apple and Conflict Materials: Ethical Sourcing for Sustainability. See also the 2017 and 2018 SCM-related winners.
2022 SCM Best Paper Award Winners
As in previous years, the Journal of Supply Chain Management recently announced the winning paper of the 2021 Best Paper Awards at the Annual Meeting of the Academy of Management. And here it is: On Publicness Theory and Its Implications for Supply Chain Integration: The Case of Criminal Justice Supply Chains by Aline Pietrix Seepma, Dirk Pieter van Donk, and Carolien de Blok. Congratulations! Herein, the authors extend publicness theory to its application at the interorganizational level. JSCM also announced two runner-ups. The first one is Selecting Startups as Suppliers: A Typology of Supplier Selection Archetypes by Stefan Kurpjuweit, Stephan M. Wagner, and Thomas Y. Choi. The second one is my own paper, Dancing the Supply Chain: Toward Transformative Supply Chain Management (see my previous blog post). Just to make this very clear, the decisions for these awards were made by a committee before I applied for the role as JSCM Co-Editor-in-Chief.
Social Network Analysis in Supply Chain Management
It is time to take a closer look at Borgatti & Li’s (2009) important article: On Social Network Analysis in a Supply Chain Context. The article has become part of the canon of SCM literature since its publication and it is now a mandatory reading in many SCM master programs across the globe. In simple language, the article offers a very good introduction to the subject of social networks and relates social network concepts (e.g., ego network, node centrality, structural hole, structural equivalence) to the supply chain context. Even ten years after its publication, the article has not lost its relevance for our discipline. Last year, it was one of the ten most downloaded articles from the Journal of Supply Chain Management. The authors argue “that the network perspective has the potential to be a unifying force that can bring together many different streams of management research, including SCM, into a coherent management science perspective”. I agree.
Borgatti, S.P. & Li, X. (2009). On Social Network Analysis in a Supply Chain Context. Journal of Supply Chain Management, 45 (2), 5-22. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1745-493X.2009.03166.x
The Reproducibility Crisis
In her insightful Nature comment Rein in the Four Horsemen of Irreproducibility, Dorothy Bishop describes how threats to reproducibility, recognized but unaddressed for decades, might finally be brought under control, by avoiding what she refers to as “the four horsemen of the reproducibility apocalypse”: publication bias, low statistical power, P-value hacking and HARKing (hypothesizing after results are known). In the video below she makes several important points. My perception is that the SCM research community does not take the reproducibility debate seriously enough.
Supply-chain Trade
Today, I would like to call attention to a highly-cited article by Baldwin & Lopez-Gonzalez, titled Supply-chain Trade: A Portrait of Global Patterns and Several Testable Hypotheses, which was published in The World Economy in 2015. The journal’s perspective – trade policy and other open economy issues – differs from the supply chain management perspective I normally talk about here, which gives this article an interesting complementary perspective. The authors use the term “supply-chain trade” to characterize “complex cross-border flows of goods, know-how, investment, services and people”. They compare two positions: “According to policymakers [supply-chain trade] is transformative; among economists, however, it is typically viewed as trade in goods that happens to be concentrated in parts and components”. Based on two rich datasets, they argue “that the facts are on the side of the policymakers”, as “[f]lourishing supply-chain trade has revolutionised global economic relations and the revolution is still in full swing”. Definitely a good read!
Baldwin, R. & Lopez-Gonzalez, J. (2015). Supply-chain Trade: A Portrait of Global Patterns and Several Testable Hypotheses. The World Economy, 29 (1), 65-83. https://doi.org/10.1111/twec.12189
