Future Research Themes in Supply Chain Management
What are the future dominant research themes in supply chain management? In my new article, Mapping the Landscape of Future Research Themes in Supply Chain Management, co-authored with Robert Handfield and Christian Durach and published in the Journal of Business Logistics, we make an attempt to answer this important question. Our research is based on survey data collected from 141 SCM scholars. Big data ranks 1st on the list of topics that scholars expect will become important in the next years. Interestingly, this topic does not even appear in the top 10 of the list of topics that scholars think should become important. This list is led by sustainability and risk management instead. We calculated the differences between the will-become-important and should-become-important topics. The largest discrepancies can be found for: (1) the “people dimension” of SCM, (2) ethical issues, (3) internal integration, (4) transparency/visibility, and (5) human capital/talent management. These five under-represented topics could thus be good choices for future research projects or special journal issues.
Wieland, A., Handfield, R., & Durach, C. (2016). Mapping the Landscape of Future Research Themes in Supply Chain Management. Journal of Business Logistics, 37 (3), 1-8 https://doi.org/10.1111/jbl.12131
If you don’t have access to the journal, please feel free to request a copy of the paper via ResearchGate (blue button on their page).
Citations of Excellence Awards 2016
Each year, Emerald awards certificates to highly cited papers, hereby also taking into account the content of the papers (see my previous post). I identified five Citations of Excellence winners related to SCM this year: (1) Technology Designed to Combat Fakes in the Global Supply Chain by Li; (2) The Reduction of Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Freight Transport by Pooling Supply Chains by Pan, Ballot & Fontane; (3) Ensuring Supply Chain Resilience: Development and Implementation of an Assessment Tool by Pettit, Croxton & Fiksel; (4) Closed-Loop Supply Chains: A Critical Review, and Future Research by Souza; and (5) Data Science, Predictive Analytics, and Big Data: A Revolution that Will Transform Supply Chain Design and Management by Waller & Fawcett. All of these articles were selected from articles published in 2013. It can again be observed that articles dealing with sustainability or resilience seem to have a good chance to become highly cited, but also articles about innovative technologies turn out to be quite popular.
Li, L. (2013). Technology Designed to Combat Fakes in the Global Supply Chain. Business Horizons, 56 (2), 167-177 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bushor.2012.11.010
Pan, S., Ballot, E., & Fontane, F. (2013). The Reduction of Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Freight Transport by Pooling Supply Chains. International Journal of Production Economics, 143 (1), 86-94 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijpe.2010.10.023
Pettit, T., Croxton, K., & Fiksel, J. (2013). Ensuring Supply Chain Resilience: Development and Implementation of an Assessment Tool. Journal of Business Logistics, 34 (1), 46-76 https://doi.org/10.1111/jbl.12009
Souza, G. (2013). Closed-Loop Supply Chains: A Critical Review, and Future Research. Decision Sciences, 44 (1), 7-38 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-5915.2012.00394.x
Waller, M., & Fawcett, S. (2013). Data Science, Predictive Analytics, and Big Data: A Revolution That Will Transform Supply Chain Design and Management. Journal of Business Logistics, 34 (2), 77-84 https://doi.org/10.1111/jbl.12010
Can Supply Chains Become Truly Sustainable?
Our world is in crisis! Ten years ago, Time Magazine featured the headline: “Be Worried. Be Very Worried.” (about global warming). But things only got worse since. Leaked TTIP documents point to a race to the bottom in ecological standards between the EU and the U.S. New NASA figures show that April 2016 was the seventh month in a row that broke global temperature records and NOAA data show that “[t]he globally averaged temperature over land and ocean surfaces for 2015 was the highest among all years since record keeping began in 1880”. A second aspect of the sustainability debate relates to resource scarcity: Some metals might soon be in short supply. However, many companies have unsustainable business models in place. For example, Apple expects an iPhone to be replaced after just three years. Is there any hope? In their new JSCM article, Montabon et al. (2016) describe an ecologically-dominant logic which could help companies to develop sustainable business models. A must-read!
Montabon, F., Pagell, M., & Wu, Z. (2016). Making Sustainability Sustainable. Journal of Supply Chain Management, 52 (2), 11-27 https://doi.org/10.1111/jscm.12103
Sustainable Business Models Require a Revolution of SCM
The United Nations Conference on Climate Change (COP 21) has begun near Paris today. Let us hope it does not fail again – like too many other conferences before. Indeed, time is slipping away and the world will face a bleak future if we do not act now. (A prediction of this future can be found in Stager’s (2015) recent comment.) What we will see are totally new business models or as Unruh (2015) puts it in a nutshell: “A rule-of-thumb I give managers is that if your sustainability performance indicators only improve when customers use your product less often, it means you’re in trouble.” But if business will not be as usual, we cannot afford to manage supply chains the same way as before. Rather we need to revolutionize our supply chain toolset. I expect that a large part of our future research projects will be about how supply chains, as the backbones of business, can make CO2-neutral business models happen.
Update (2015-12-12): A deal to attempt to limit the rise in global temperatures has been agreed. The Paris Agreement is certainly not perfect, but it will provide a hook on which people can hang their demands now. This will have supply chain implications.
Empowering Responsible Value Chains
The Rana Plaza factory collapse in Bangladesh in 2013 has opened the eyes of many supply chain managers: Implementing a socially responsible supply chain has, indeed, become an imperative for global corporations and the supply chain management discipline might be in the middle of a paradigm shift. A World Economic Forum report, Beyond Supply Chains: Empowering Responsible Value Chains (pdf; prepared in collaboration with Accenture), examines how companies strive for what the authors call “the triple supply chain advantage” – realizing societal, environmental and business benefits at the same time – and looks at how they intend to achieve it. The authors present a comprehensive set of 31 practices “that provide guidance for companies looking to codify their own specific portfolio of triple advantage improvement measures”. For each of these practices a detailed value assessment and good practices from companies are provided. This report is a good start when implementing a socially responsible supply chain.
Sustainable Supply Chains: A Country Comparison
The global not-for-profit organization CDP (formerly the Carbon Disclosure Project) has published a report: Supply Chain Sustainability Revealed: A Country Comparison. The report was written by Accenture Strategy. “While climate and water risks are apparent, the implications for businesses and economies reliant on complex supply chain models are less understood”, says Paul Simpson, CEO, CDP. “The good news is that as companies transform their supply chains into digital supply networks they will gain greater end-to-end visibility, traceability and access to information to report on their compliance progress and mitigate climate risks”, adds Gary Hanifan, managing director, Accenture Strategy. The report reveals that suppliers in France, the UK, Spain and Germany are identified as the most sustainable ones, whereas suppliers in China, Italy and the U.S. turn out to be particularly vulnerable. The report also shows that Brazil, Canada and India must do more to encourage suppliers to report emission reduction initiatives.
The Ethical Shopper: A Myth?
It has often been assumed that one of the characteristics of SCM philosophy is “a customer focus to create unique and individualized sources of customer value, leading to customer satisfaction” (Mentzer et al., 2001). This assumption has led to business models like Primark, which aim to satisfy customer needs for fashion by making incredibly cheap garments available – so cheap that many teenagers nowadays are used to throw them away after just two weeks. Part of the truth is that such customer needs are not only satisfied by these businesses, but also created by the marketing experts that are part of the system. But to what extend can we expect that customers critically reflect the way they consume? A very interesting article by Michael Hobbes argues: “We’re still trying to eliminate sweatshops and child labor by buying right. But that’s not how the world works in 2015.” Hobbes’ article is titled The Myth of the Ethical Shopper. See also: Supply Chain Management and Corporate Social Responsibility.
G7 Summit: World Leaders Discuss Global Supply Chains
Expectations were low for the G7 Summit in Germany, which ended today. It is thus all the more surprising that the participants have agreed to phase out the use of fossil fuels by the end of the century. When asked about what he – besides climate targets – considers the most important result of the summit, one of the participants, the President of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, made a remarkable statement today on German TV: “Well, this might surprise you, as it is rarely reported on in the news: We had an in-depth discussion about supply chains. Surely, we cannot accept that we, in our part of Europe, wallow in wealth and, in the face of the global problems caused by social dumping, let others pick up the bill for our wealth. What we need are fair conditions everywhere: labor rights, environmental standards. And this is what we will be working on.” It seems that the world’s leaders have put supply chains on their priority list.
Do We Really Need a New Smart Phone Every Two Years?
We all know about natural resource scarcity. However, as brand companies make consumers believe they need a new smart phone every two years, today’s global supply chains are responsible for incredibly large amounts of electronic waste. A new United Nations University report, titled The Global E-waste Monitor – 2014, details e-waste generation by region. The total amount of e-waste generated in 2014 is 41.8 million metric tonnes (Mt) and it is forecasted to increase to 50 Mt in 2018. This e-waste comprises 12.8 Mt of small equipment (e.g., toasters, video cameras), 11.8 Mt of large equipment (e.g., washing machines, photovoltaic panels), 7.0 Mt of cooling and freezing equipment, 6.3 Mt of screens, 3.0 Mt of small IT (e.g., mobile phones, computers), and 1.0 Mt of lamps. With 32% of the world’s total, the United States (7.1 Mt) and China (6.0 Mt) are responsible for most of the e-waste overall. The top per capita producers, however, are Norway (28.3 kg), Switzerland, Iceland, Denmark, and the United Kingdom.
Baldé, C.P., Wang, F., Kuehr, R., Huisman, J. (2015). The Global E-waste Monitor – 2014. United Nations University, IAS – SCYCLE, Bonn, Germany
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
