DOCTORAL RESEARCH IN LOGISTICS AND LOGISTICS‐RELATED AREAS: 1992–1998

A total of 317 logistics and logistics‐related dissertations were published in Dissertation Abstracts between 1992 and 1998. Observations about these dissertation abstracts are offered and comparisons made with earlier research studies that examined dissertations published between 1970–1986 and 1987–1991. The number of dissertations published has plateaued although the number of colleges and universities granting doctoral degrees in the area have broadened, with several “new players” entering the arena. Some traditional topics within logistics are being researched to a lesser degree, while others such as supply chain management, general logistics, customer service/satisfaction, international logistics, and human resources/organizational issues, are being examined more frequently.     

GLOBAL SUPPLY CHAIN RISK MANAGEMENT

Global supply chains face a multitude of risks. A review of the recent literature reveals a few structured and systematic approaches for assessing risks in supply chains. However, there is no conceptual framework that ties together this literature. The purpose of this paper is to integrate literature from several disciplines ‐ including logistics, supply chain management, operations management, strategy, and international business ‐ to develop a model of global supply chain risk management. The implications for stakeholders and how future research could bring more insights to the phenomenon of global supply chain risk management are also discussed.     

ACTION RESEARCH IN SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT—A FRAMEWORK FOR RELEVANT AND RIGOROUS RESEARCH

In this article we present a framework that researchers can use when they prepare and conduct Action Research (AR) projects. Authors can also use the framework as a guide for how to write relevant and rigorous AR articles. AR is an applied form of case‐based research that can provide exceedingly relevant research in applied fields such as supply chain management. At the same time, AR is also a criticized research approach, particularly in terms of research rigor. With the ambition to address, as well as bridge, the gap between the relevance and rigor within AR research, we first develop a comprehensive research methodology framework that synthesizes the crucial aspects of the AR research methodology. Secondly, we review existing AR articles within logistics, operations management, and supply chain management and present the current state of AR research. After a critical review of the existing articles using our framework, we delineate vital aspects that should be addressed in future AR research. As relevance and rigor are not at odds, we believe that our comprehensive framework will pave the way for a growing stream of rigorous, as well as relevant, AR research.     

DEVELOPING SOCIAL IDENTITY AND SOCIAL CAPITAL FOR SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT

Competition involves not firm against firm but rather supply chain against supply chain, but few studies explain theoretically the subsistence of a supply chain as a social entity or the operating mechanisms through which firms socialize to obtain better business performance. On the bases of social identity theory and social capital theory, the authors suggest that the salience of supply chain identity accumulates social capital in a supply chain, which then facilitates supply chain management and improves business performance.     

THE ROLE OF LOGISTICS MANAGERS IN THE CROSS‐FUNCTIONAL IMPLEMENTATION OF SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT

There is confusion about the domain of supply chain management, and the functions and processes that should be included. In this paper, we describe the key supply chain management processes, the role of logistics managers in each of these processes, and what the logistics function gains from this involvement.     

SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT AND ITS RELATIONSHIP TO LOGISTICS,MARKETING, PRODUCTION,AND OPERATIONS MANAGEMENT

The renaming of the Council of Logistics Management (CLM) to the Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals (CSCMP) ushered in some interesting definitional dialogue and debate within the practitioner and academic communities. Inherent in emerging definitions is the notion that SCM encompasses activities traditionally considered aspects of production, logistics, marketing, and operations management. Defining SCM in such a broad scope (i.e., a “within” and “across” functions perspective), while considered by many scholars as the true representation of the essence of SCM, creates confusion regarding the appropriate organizational level within a business that is best suited for managerial decision making regarding the phenomenon. This paper contributes to the emerging SCM dialogue by highlighting the functional spaces (the “within” function perspective), relationships, and conceptual overlaps (the “across” functions perspective) between marketing, logistics, production, operations, and supply chain management. By comparing and contrasting the literature‐based conceptual boundaries of each discipline, a framework is proposed that more clearly captures the essence of the SCM decision making sphere. Managerial insights and future research implications are presented.     

AN INVESTIGATION OF THE VALUE OF CROSS‐DOCKING FOR SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT

Cross‐docking is the practice of transferring materials from an incoming shipment directly to an outgoing shipment without storing them at the transfer point. This essentially eliminates the inventory‐holding function of a warehouse and can reduce supply chain costs. We investigate the value of one type of cross‐docking in a variety of supply chain environments.     

LOGISTICS AND SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT APPLICATIONS WITHIN A GLOBAL CONTEXT: AN OVERVIEW

This paper reviews 726 academic research studies covering logistics and supply chain management (L'SCM) applications within a global context. Articles are analyzed according to their publication year and outlet, common themes, and countries or regions investigated. The sample was drawn from the ABI/INFORM Global database, which includes almost 1,800 journal titles. The review offers a starting point for researchers, graduate students, faculty members or practitioners examining international L'SCM applications. The article also draws attention to the wide array of global L'SCM studies conducted, their settings and viewpoints. Additionally, this paper highlights some of the most interesting works and draws attention to lesser‐researched countries and regions of the world. The overview also provides an introduction for practitioners and managers to what academic research has covered in the area of global L'SCM. Practitioners can use this review as a starting point for the identification of relevant and useful references for their particular task.     

DEBIASING STRATEGIES IN SUPPLY MANAGEMENT DECISION‐MAKING

Human judgment and decision making under uncertainty are vulnerable to decision biases leading to deviations from the standard assumptions of the rational paradigm in economics. This fact is currently not widely reflected by research on decision making in sourcing contexts. However, supply managers are aware of the judgment and decision challenges that result from existing and increasing levels of uncertainty in the external, upstream supply chain, and deploy decision supporting strategies for debiasing their judgments. The analysis of supply management decisions using 441 data units from 133 embedded cases from 15 buying organizations revealed high levels of such debiasing strategies. However, the seemingly most effective mitigation strategy recommended in the general debiasing literature ‐ creating awareness of the underlying mechanics causing decision biases ‐ was only employed by one buying organization, indicating a need to further investigate debiasing strategies specifically in supply management contexts.     

EXPLORING A GOVERNANCE THEORY OF SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT: BARRIERS AND FACILITATORS TO INTEGRATION

Supply chain management is rapidly growing as both a strategic initiative and an academic discipline. As firms increasingly include their supply chain partners in the development of business strategy, researchers will have to constantly reevaluate the underlying themes and emergent theories of strategic logistics, management, and marketing by introducing new topics and revisiting seminal extant results. As such, this research was developed to explore the important concept of supply chain integration through strategic governance theory development. Since supply chain governance is a relatively new topic, a grounded study of both new and existing integration facilitators and barriers is presented. The study was initiated with a qualitative “managerial” development of scale items followed by a full empirical analysis. The result is an industry based returning to the source methodology for testing current governance related issues in industry. Contributions include the development of multiple dimensions of supply chain governance across facilitators and barriers, an explanation of the interplay between governance facilitators of, and barriers to, integration, a discussion of strategic level managerial implications, and a call for the future extension of governance research into the theory wanting domain of logistics and supply chain management.     

AN INVESTIGATION INTO THE EFFECT OF FULL‐SCALE SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT SOFTWARE ADOPTIONS ON INVENTORY BALANCES AND TURNS

Supply chain management (SCM) software vendors, analysts, and others claim that firms implementing SCM software stand to benefit by being able to reduce inventory holdings and increase inventory turns. We theorize that full‐scale implementations lead to system‐wide inventory optimization, which in turn leads to cost improvement associated with inventory balances and turns. To examine the question, we develop an analytical model of inventory optimization, then analyze the effects of the model with a numerical experiment, and finally confirm the results with an empirical examination. We find that firm‐wide implementation is significant in explaining improvement in inventory metrics, relative to pre‐implementation metrics for our sample. Our empirical tests indicate that implementing SCM software across only a portion of the firm does not impact inventory metrics, but that the scale of implementation does. More precisely, we find that firms implementing SCM software across the entire company significantly improve both inventory turns and inventory as a percent of revenue relative to partially‐implementing firms and non‐implementers.     

A THREE‐STAGE IMPLEMENTATION MODEL FOR SUPPLY CHAIN COLLABORATION

Leading companies know that collaboration and creativity in supply chain (SC) relationships are critical to future competitiveness. Yet, many companies struggle to collaborate effectively. This reality raises the question: “How can managers overcome the cultural and structural impediments to SC collaboration?” Through a series of in-depth, semi-structured interviews, we identify core practices and key requirements to successful SC collaboration. Contingency and force field theories help transform our field study findings into a three-stage model for improving SC collaboration. The constant challenge of persuading other managers and companies to pursue SC collaboration highlights the need for a proven-path approach to SC collaboration.     

THE INTELLECTUAL STRUCTURE OF SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT: A BIBLIOMETRIC APPROACH

Now that supply chain management has a two‐decade research history, it is possible to examine the literature to identify whether there is any latent intellectual structure using bibliometric tools. The study applies a citation and co‐citation approach to reveal four clusters of research that have emerged. One cluster has strong ties to the logistics field, with primarily conceptual articles. A second cluster finds its roots in operations research, and consists mainly of modeling articles. The application of multidimensional scaling, cluster analysis, and factor analysis on co‐citations demonstrated a clearly identifiable structure. The structure is examined and implications for the future development of supply chain research are discussed.     

UNDERSTANDING THE FINANCIAL CONSEQUENCES OF THE BULLWHIP EFFECT IN A MULTI‐ECHELON SUPPLY CHAIN

This article is concerned with how supply chain strategies can mitigate the Bullwhip Effect and inflated inventories from the perspective of the central firm (typically a manufacturer) in the supply chain. We first outline a base case scenario with a validated system dynamics simulation model, using supply chain characteristics as reported by a real firm, in this case a Mexican electronics supplier to U.S. automobile assemblers. We find, surprisingly, that a lower Bullwhip Effect Index (BE) does not always lead to lower costs in the supply chain studied. Furthermore, sensitivity analysis suggests some interesting, counterintuitive results. The implications of these findings are further developed as we test how lead time reduction can also reduce the Bullwhip Effect in the simulated setting.     

RESPONDING TO DISRUPTIONS IN THE SUPPLY NETWORK‐FROM DORMANT TO ACTION

Managing risks in supply networks is a complex task; more so in those supply networks where the core competence lies in dealing with natural disasters, complex emergencies, and large‐scale attacks—namely those of humanitarian, and military organizations where the price of failure can be counted in terms of the loss of life rather than, simply, reduced profits. This conceptual article examines the capabilities of these supply networks to manage such disruptions, based on their resource configuration in a dormant preparation state. The article concludes by presenting how different types of supply networks can manage large‐scale disruptions.     

A GLOBAL SUPPLY CHAIN PROFIT MAXIMIZATION AND TRANSFER PRICING MODEL

In environments where tax rates in local regions do not represent major decision factors, a cost minimization methodology, which represents the most common optimization modeling approach for integrated manufacturing and distribution planning, can help formulate an effective integrated plan. However, when planning flexibility or alternatives exist because of differing local country tax rates and types and intra‐company transfer pricing options, cost minimization methodologies may inaccurately identify profit‐maximizing global production and distribution plans. Instead, a profit maximization model that explicitly evaluates decisions such as where to incur tax liabilities and how to set intra‐company prices may be required to develop an integrated global manufacturing and distribution plan. In this paper, we discuss and formulate a model that yields profit maximizing global production and distribution plans. We discuss the managerial implications of our results, and the potential applications and benefits of the model.     

A Compendium of Multi‐Item Scales Utilized in Logistics Research (2001–10): Progress Achieved Since Publication of the 1973–2000 Compendium

Forty years have passed since the first multi‐item measurement scales were employed through survey research to better understand important logistics concepts. Through the years, four leading logistics journals have published research containing a total of 1,670 scales within 283 articles. A 42% increase in utilization has occurred during the most recent decade. The research fully discloses the conceptualization, composition, and properties of the multi‐item survey scales utilized in the study of logistics and supply chain management theory and practice. By documenting each scale published from 2001 to 2010, the authors make comparisons with results from the 1973–2000 study. Primary findings indicate an increase in the percentage of research utilizing multi‐item scales, and an increase in the application of confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) has assisted in producing more highly acceptable psychometric properties of the scales. This implies that researchers are utilizing more highly developed scales and following strict scale‐development procedures for building more robust scales to measure concepts important for advancing our knowledge of logistics and supply chain management. The top four conceptual categories for the scales have remained the same since 1973 and account for greater than half of the scales published. Eight additions to the categories since 2001 pertain greatly to controlling our supply chains for customer, brand, and overall security benefits. The compendium of scales provides a central document to reference as researchers seek to employ highly developed survey measures.     

CONSTRUCTING IMPACT FACTORS TO MEASURE THE INFLUENCE OF SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT AND LOGISTICS JOURNALS

Data from ten supply chain management and logistics journals are combined with data from the ISI Web of Science database to develop a series of impact factors. The resulting constructed impact factors provide a context for comparing and ranking leading academic supply chain management and logistics journals. They also provide an objective way of comparing the relative influence of supply chain management and logistics journals, as well as a platform for comparing their influence with that of journals in more general fields like management and business.     

SUPPLY CHAIN INTERFACES: DEFINING ATTRIBUTES AND ATTRIBUTE VALUES FOR COLLABORATIVE LOGISTICS MANAGEMENT

Managing supply chain interfaces, where information or physical goods are exchanged between one trading partner and another, is a key component of collaborative logistics management (CLM). Identifying the interfaces on which to focus, and describing the attributes and attribute values of these interfaces, fosters effective CLM arrangements.