News from the Journal of Business Logistics (Guest Post by the New Editors)
In today’s guest post, Glenn Richey and Beth Davis-Sramek highlight what will guide them in their tenure as the new Co-Editors-in-Chief of the Journal of Business Logistics.
What a pivotal time for those of us engaged in logistics and supply chain research! As the world experiences a global pandemic on a scale that no institution was fully prepared to handle, its effects have reverberated throughout supply chains across all industry sectors. One result should be the development of new research questions that may challenge long-standing theoretical frameworks and relationships. The aftermath of the pandemic also presents another opportunity for the field. As academics in the U.S., we traditionally heard questions along the lines of, “what exactly is a supply chain?” Now, however, we hear things like, “What must be done to fix ‘the’ supply chain?” As this question indicates, we find ourselves in a unique situation to educate a broader population on the economic and humanitarian importance of effective SCM.
As the incoming co-editors of the Journal of Business Logistics, we look forward to embracing these opportunities. We lay out our strategic priorities in an editorial in the last issue (Supply Chain Management and Logistics: An Editorial Approach for a New Era). They include expediting the review process and increasing the number of number of published manuscripts. Importantly, we also recognize that scholarly contributions from our international colleagues are critical in enhancing the reach and reputation of JBL. In the coming weeks, we will update the Editorial Review Board and ask a smaller group of scholars to serve as JBL Senior Editors. Now and in the future, we welcome feedback about how to advance our goals, how to serve our community of scholars, and how to disseminate the implications of our research to a broader set of stakeholders.
Robert Glenn Richey Jr is Chair of the Department of Supply Chain Management at Auburn University. Beth Davis-Sramek is the Gayle Parks Forehand Professor at the Department of Systems and Technology at Auburn University.
Impact of the Fourth Industrial Revolution on Supply Chains (Guest Post by Wolfgang Lehmacher, Forum)
My guest post today comes from Wolfgang Lehmacher, who presents a white paper prepared by the World Economic Forum in collaboration with BVL International.
The report, titled Impact of the Fourth Industrial Revolution on Supply Chains, provides preliminary considerations for Fourth Industrial Revolution-driven supply chains. Based on the impact on supply chains of advanced technologies, in particular the Internet of Things, artificial intelligence, advanced robotics, enterprise wearables and additive manufacturing, the report highlights seven areas of focus for business and government: new roles and responsibilities, supply chain performance, agile organizations, ecosystem for skilling, support for SMEs, leadership and neutral platforms. The Fourth Industrial Revolution changes the way in which we produce and manage the supply chain, and paves the way for the creation of new value chains. The following developments are expected to play a major role in this process going forward: Open innovation, i.e. greater openness of companies towards involving both other companies and their customers in innovation and development processes, distributed manufacturing as an approach to the comprehensive decentralization of production structures and the elimination of classic manufacturing paradigms, and new collaboration models between companies, primarily horizontally, but also vertically.
Wolfgang Lehmacher is Head of Supply Chain and Transport Industries at the World Economic Forum. During his career he was Partner and Managing Director (China and India) at the global strategy firm CVA and President and CEO of GeoPost Intercontinental. He is member of the IATA Air Cargo Innovation Awards Jury and the Logistikweisen, a think tank under the patronage of the German Federal Ministry BMVI. He is FT, Forbes, Fortune, BI contributor and author of books, including The Global Supply Chain – 2017 and How Logistics Shapes Our Lives – 2013 (German).
World Bank Study: Global Shortage of Logistics Skills (Guest Post by Kai Hoberg, KLU)
My guest post today comes from Kai Hoberg from the Kühne Logistics University (KLU) in Hamburg. Together with his co-authors, Alan McKinnon and Christoph Flöthmann, he has just published a new report, which is commissioned by the World Bank and analyzes the shortage of qualified logistics personnel.
Qualified logistics personnel is in short supply worldwide. This is the conclusion of our new report, titled Logistics Competencies, Skills, and Training: A Global Overview. While there are too few well-trained executives in the logistics sector in emerging countries, there is an acute shortage of qualified staff at the operational level in developed economies. We argue that this skills shortage is likely to worsen in the absence of new initiatives. There are two aspects that deserve further elaboration: First, physically, there are too few people available to cover vacant position in the logistics sector. Second, the currently employed workforce is partially lacking the skills demanded for their job. Based on an empirical analysis, we derive multiple recommendations for relevant stakeholders, i.e. companies, governmental institutions and logistics associations. The proposed measures include innovative training methods like logistics-related business games that can be employed without requiring high upfront investments or long implementation lead-times.
Kai Hoberg is Associate Professor of Supply Chain & Operations Strategy at KLU. In his academic career he was a visiting scholar at Cornell University, Israel Institute of Technology, University of Oxford and National University of Singapore. He is on the scientific advisory board of the German Logistics Association (BVL) and has been working with companies like Procter & Gamble, McKinsey & Company, Jungheinrich and Zalando on supply chain innovation projects.
Getting Starry-eyed about Journals (Guest Post by Alan McKinnon)
My guest post today comes from Alan McKinnon who for several years has been raising concerns about the academic obsession with journal rankings and low rating of logistics/SCM journals. He has just published a new paper updating his earlier arguments.
In a paper that I wrote five years ago I argued that the development of logistics/supply chain management (SCM) as a discipline was being impaired by the relatively low ranking of specialist journals in this field. I was surprised and heartened by the favourable response I received both from logistics/SCM researchers and academics in other disciplines experiencing a similar problem. I have now returned to the journal ranking debate with a sequel to my original article which reviews recent literature on the subject, analyses new data on the validity of the journal ranking as an indicator of research quality and discusses the recalibration of logistics/SCM journals since 2010/11. The literature challenging the principle, practice and application of journal ranking has been steadily expanding and becoming more critical. Regrettably this is not deterring university managers from basing many recruitment, promotional and resource allocation decisions on the rating of journals. Data generated by the UK government’s assessment of university research (REF) has confirmed that, in the field of business and management, the journal ranking is an unreliable predictor of the quality and impact of an individual journal paper. In this analysis, papers published in lower ranked journals tended to be under-valued, a finding of particular relevance to logistics/SCM journals as they tend to be on the 2nd or 3rd tiers of the major journal lists. Since 2010/11, there has been some overall improvement in the relative standing of these journals, though a couple have been downgraded in the widely-used ABS list. Fortunately the backlash against journal rank “fetishism” has begun with bottom-up campaigns such as DORA and top-down, government-led initiatives in countries such as the UK and Australia aiming to make research assessment fairer, more transparent and more rigorous.
Alan McKinnon is Professor of Logistics in Kühne Logistics University, Hamburg and Professor Emeritus at Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh. You can find out more about his research and publications at www.alanmckinnon.co.uk and follow him on Twitter @alancmckinnon.
McKinnon, A.C. (2017). Starry-eyed II: The Logistics Journal Ranking Debate Revisited. International Journal of Physical Distribution & Logistics Management, 47 (6). DOI: 10.1108/IJPDLM-02-2017-0097
Implications from the Rana Plaza Disaster (Guest Post by Brian Jacobs and Vinod Singhal)
Today’s guest post comes from Brian Jacobs and Vinod Singhal, who present the results of their recent research on social issues in global textile supply chains.
Rana Plaza, an eight-story building in Bangladesh that housed garment factories employing approximately 5000 workers, collapsed on April 24, 2013. The resulting fatalities (over 1100) and injuries (over 2400) made it one of the worst industrial accidents in history. The scale of this tragedy increased awareness of the risks and costs of sourcing from low-cost countries. Such risks and costs are often assumed to be sufficient to motivate firms to source production in developed, high-cost countries rather than developing, low-cost countries. To examine this assumption, we studied the stock market reaction to 39 global apparel retailers with significant sourcing in Bangladesh. We found that although stock market reaction to retailers on the day of the Rana Plaza disaster was negative, its magnitude and significance dissipated by the following day. Our research shows that capital market forces alone are insufficient to prevent tragedies such as the Rana Plaza disaster, or to motivate large scale changes in sourcing patterns. In fact, garment exports from Bangladesh have increased since 2013 even though substandard working conditions persist. While managers should weigh ethics and their moral obligation in addition to financial considerations, it is doubtful that firms can affect the needed changes without participation by non-market forces such as NGOs and policymakers. For full details of our research, please see our article The Effect of the Rana Plaza Disaster on Shareholder Wealth of Retailers: Implications for Sourcing Strategies and Supply Chain Governance, forthcoming in Journal of Operations Management.
Vinod Singhal is a Professor of Operations Management and holds the Charles W. Brady Chair at the Scheller College of Business, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, Georgia. Brian Jacobs is an Associate Professor of Supply Chain Management at the Eli Broad College of Business, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan.
Jacobs, B., & Singhal, V. (2017). The Effect of the Rana Plaza Disaster on Shareholder Wealth of Retailers: Implications for Sourcing Strategies and Supply Chain Governance. Journal of Operations Management DOI: 10.1016/j.jom.2017.01.002
Global Supply Chain Report 2017 (Guest Post by Dexter Galvin)
I am happy to share the following guest post by Dexter Galvin, Head of Supply Chain, CDP. Thank you for contributing to my blog.
Our latest Global Supply Chain Report 2017, written in partnership with BSR and the Carbon Trust, revealed emissions savings of 434 million tonnes disclosed by suppliers in 2016. That’s more than the annual emissions of France, and it shows that the supply chain is a critical component – the missing link – in securing our sustainable, low-carbon future. Our data showed that supply chain action isn’t just about reducing emissions; it’s also good for the bottom line. Companies with emissions reduction projects disclosed cost savings of $12.4 billion as a result of their carbon-cutting measures – double what was reported in 2015. Almost half of the top 100 projects by savings were related to energy efficiency, and with a payback period of three years or less, the majority of projects had an attractive investment profile too. While the savings achieved by suppliers were certainly impressive, around half of the 4,300 companies we surveyed didn’t report any emissions reduction activities at all. So think what the impact could be – on costs and carbon levels – if they all took action?
Dexter runs the Supply Chain program at the global climate change NGO, CDP, from their London Headquarters. He has launched a number of important global initiatives to drive climate action in private and public sector supply chains, including CDP’s Action Exchange initiative. You can follow him on Twitter: @GalvinDex
Introducing the Journal of Supply Chain Management (Guest Post by the Co-Editors-in-Chief)
In today’s guest post, Mark Pagell, Brian Fugate and Barbara Flynn highlight what will guide them in their tenure as the new Co-Editors-in-Chief of the Journal of Supply Chain Management.
Being appointed as the co-editors of JSCM is both a great honor and a significant responsibility. The Journal’s mission will remain to be the journal of choice among supply chain scholars across disciplines, by attracting high-quality, high-impact behavioral research focusing on theory building and empirical methodologies. Our changes will be evolutionary not revolutionary and will build on the solid foundations built by the former editors. In our tenure we will be guided by the following: First, JSCM will continue to publish rigorous, empirical research on SCM topics. And this research must contribute to theory, through testing established theoretical foundations or building theory that is unique to the domain. Second, we recognize that methodological best practice is always evolving and situationally specific hence we will not create one-size-fits-all rules that inhibit the development of supply chain knowledge and theory. Third, we have a responsibility to the wider community, especially early career researchers, to continue providing timely and developmental reviews as part of a fair editorial process. JSCM has progressed substantially over the last decade. With your help and guided by the values described above, we hope to continue that progression. For more information please read our recent JSCM editorial.
Mark Pagell holds a Chair in Global Leadership and is a Professor of Sustainable Supply Chain Management at University College Dublin, Ireland. Brian Fugate is the Oren Harris Chair in Transportation, Associate Professor of Supply Chain Management at the University of Arkansas, United States. Barbara Flynn is the Richard M. and Myra Louise Professor of Manufacturing Management at Indiana University, United States.
Pagell, M., Fugate, B., & Flynn, B. (2016). Editorial. Journal of Supply Chain Management, 52 (4), 3-4 DOI: 10.1111/jscm.12128
Introducing the International Journal of Logistics: Research & Applications (Guest Post by the Editor-in-Chief)
In today’s guest post, Andrew Lyons, one of the two new Editors-in-Chief of the International Journal of Logistics: Research & Applications (IJoL) provides an introduction to his journal.
The International Journal of Logistics: Research & Applications (IJoL) publishes original and challenging work that has a clear applicability to the business world. As a result the journal publishes work that is original and academically rigorous that has also demonstrated to have made a positive impact on supply chains or has clear potential to be of significant practical value. High quality contributions are therefore welcomed from both academics and professionals working in the field of logistics and supply chain management. Papers should further our understanding of logistics and supply chain management and make a significant original contribution to knowledge. In this context the term “logistics” is taken in its broadest context as “the management of processes, flow of materials and associated information along the entire supply chain, from raw materials through to the final user of the product”. The journal covers all aspects of logistics and supply chain management. All published research articles in this journal have undergone rigorous peer review, based on initial editor screening and anonymous refereeing by independent expert referees.
Professor Andrew Lyons is a Professor of Operations & Supply Chain Management at the University of Liverpool Management School. He is the Director of Studies MSc Operations & Supply Chain Management.
Introducing the Journal of Humanitarian Logistics and Supply Chain Management (Guest Post by the Co-Editors)
In today’s guest post, Nezih Altay and Ira Haavisto, the new Co-Editors of the Journal of Humanitarian Logistics and Supply Chain Management (JHLSCM) provide an introduction to their journal.
We are very excited and motivated about the task given to us and humbled by the trust of our friends and colleagues. JHLSCM promotes the exchange of knowledge, experience and new ideas between researchers and practitioners and encourages a multi-disciplinary and cross-functional approach to the resolution of problems and exploitations of opportunities within humanitarian supply chains. Our vision for the journal is for it to be the premier publication choice for humanitarian logistics researchers and a leading knowledge resource for practitioners. We hope to accomplish this by increasing the number of issues and expanding the scope of the journal to include research on not just post-disaster relief but all kinds of humanitarian operations, hereby continuing to emphasize evidence-based research without limiting our researchers in their methodological choices. We plan to not only expand the editorial advisory board but also engage them in the process of taking JHLSCM to the next level. Our EAB members will not just review papers but counsel authors to help them build their papers and by continuing to push for better quality. In addition to academic rigor, “quality” for us also includes dimensions like readability, timeliness, and validity. Papers published in JHLSCM should be readable and understandable by non-academics as well. They should focus on contemporary topics and solve real problems.
Dr. Ira Haavisto is the Director of the HUMLOG Institute at the Hanken School of Economics in Finland. Dr. Nezih Altay is an Associate Professor at the Driehaus College of Business of DePaul University in the United States.
Sustainability: Do Supply Management and Global Sourcing Matter? (Guest Post by Jury Gualandris, UCD)
Is it possible to achieve high environmental and social performance in global supply chains? I am happy to share the following guest post by Dr. Jury Gualandris, shedding some light on this problem. Thank you for contributing to my blog.
Increasing demand from a variety of stakeholders has pushed firms to improve environmental and social sustainability in their supply chains. Over the last decades, however, supply chains have been undergoing a process of increasing globalization, which has created the need for differentiated sustainability approaches for firms sourcing globally rather than regionally. Based on our recent publication in Supply Chain Management: An International Journal (doi:10.1108/SCM-11-2013-0430), we argue that firms leveraging higher levels of global sourcing can manage to reach equivalent environmental and social performance relative to who is sourcing locally. However, such firms must combine traditional supply management with practices having a more specific focus on the society and the environment. On the one hand, traditional supply management based on supply base reduction and coordination will compensate global sourcing’s drawbacks, such as longer distances and socio-economic, cultural differences. On the other, sustainability-oriented monitoring and collaboration will allow to leverage resources and knowledge that are potentially valuable and are not available locally, thus fostering final sustainability performance.
Jury is a Lecturer at UCD Smurfit Graduate Business School in Dublin, Ireland. His studies focus on the management of sustainability, risk and innovation under different supply chain structures. His research has received awards from IPSERA and POMS and has appeared in leading journals of our field.
Gualandris, J., Golini, R., & Kalchschmidt, M. (2014). Do Supply Management and Global Sourcing Matter for Firm Sustainability Performance? Supply Chain Management: An International Journal, 19 (3), 258-274 https://doi.org/10.1108/SCM-11-2013-0430
