The SCM Knowledge Supply Chain: Integrating World Views to Advance the Discipline

Supply chain management is a discipline immersed in knowledge creation and dissemination concerning the integration of business processes across functions and among firms. Academics are the producers and distributors in this knowledge supply chain. The Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals (CSCMP) provides numerous opportunities to integrate functions and processes between academics and practitioners. The Journal of Business Logistics, the CSCMP Educators' Conference, the CSCMP Annual Global Conference, and CSCMP per se, provide the venue for linking academics to practice, bridging the gap between the two groups as part of the same universe of value creation. Being actively involved in all of these makes a researcher more complete, relevant, and rigorous.     

Can We Stay Ahead of the Obsolescence Curve? On Inflection Points,Proactive Preemption,and the Future of Supply Chain Management

Great companies—like great products and great nations—have always endured a four‐stage life cycle: emergence, growth, maturity, and decline. Faster clockspeeds—enabled by compressed technology cycles and accelerated by new knowledge‐sharing routines such as crowdsourcing—are shrinking life cycles. What does this mean? Entities of all kinds now find themselves in a constant race against obsolescence. We thus ask a vital question,”Can we (as a discipline) stay ahead of the obsolescence curve?” Technological and sociological inflection points promise to change the rules of engagement. For instance, 3D printing, Big Data, and drones promise to change management practice. Budget deficits, poor skill improvement, and MOOCs promise to change academe. We discuss adaptation challenges and proactive preemption as preludes to presenting various visions of the future of supply chain management.     

Currency restrictions,government transaction policies and currency exchange

Summary. We study how currency restrictions and government transaction policies affect the values of fiat currencies in a two country, divisible good, search model. We show that these policies can generate equilibria where both currencies circulate as medium of exchange and where currency exchange occurs between citizens of different countries. Restrictions on the internal use of foreign currency can cause the domestic currency to be relatively more valuable to domestic agents while taxes on domestic currency create an incentive for home agents to hold foreign currency. We demonstrate that some policies increase prices and lower welfare while others do the reverse. Received: September 5, 2001; revised version: March 1, 2002     

Moving the Needle: Making a Contribution When the Easy Questions Have Been Answered

Today’s competitive and research realities are changing. That is, the easy questions have been answered and the easy research has been done. We therefore need to reevaluate our approach to research so that we can help decision makers resolve tomorrow’s challenges. Specifically, to provide nuanced insight, we need to begin to employ multimethod, metaparadigmatic, and longitudinal research more robustly. Of course, given the inherent cost—both time and money—associated with such research, we may need to seek more collaborative research opportunities and reconsider how research contribution is measured. These efforts will help us stay relevant and move the needle forward in an age where decision makers need greater understanding to create value and achieve differential performance.     

The Impact of Key Retail Accounts on Supplier Performance: A Collaborative Perspective of Resource Dependency Theory

Existing literature suggests that the increasing concentration in the retail industry is allowing powerful retailers to exploit their weaker suppliers, which causes the suppliers’ performance to suffer. This study takes a collaborative perspective of resource dependency theory and suggests that when suppliers engage in supply chain relationships with key retail account (KRA) customers, their performance may improve, depending on the varying levels of the supplier's and KRAs’ market shares. The empirical analysis of data from two large retailers, Wal-Mart and Target, and a broad cross-section of their suppliers provides ample support for most of the hypotheses set forth in this paper: Suppliers that depend on KRAs for a significant share of their total revenues relinquish some of their leverage in the marketplace, but as the KRAs gain market share, their suppliers’ performance tends to increase. Cumulatively, these results provide evidence of collaborative supplier–KRA relationships, such that a supplier's dependency on KRAs may positively affect supplier performance. This finding supports a more positive, symbiotic view of dependency, resulting in important implications for key account management, supply chain management, and retail research and practice.     

Inquiry and the Practice of Theoretical Conversation: Engaging in Dialogue to Elaborate Hidden Connections

Our goal at JBL is not just to provide a forum for theoretical conversation but also to proactively invite more insightful and interactive conversation. As active inquiry and open dialogue are critical to achieving this goal, we discuss the nature of inquiry and argue for developing the skills and conditions required to promote dialogue over discussion. Only through more profound dialogue can we address the challenges of a tumultuous decision‐making environment, advance theoretical understanding, and improve managerial practice. We then introduce “Dialogue,” a new feature at JBL, which will consist of concise statements of alternative perspectives and diverse views. Through Dialogue, we invite members of the supply chain community to join colleagues in a grand adventure of knowledge discovery. We hope you will agree that the quest for understanding is more fun when we travel the path of discovery together.     

Marketing at the retail shelf: an examination of moderating effects of logistics on SKU market share

Given that the impact of retail shelf facings and price on a product’s market share is of substantial interest to marketing managers in the retail supply chain, we examine whether these relationships may be interdependent with the firm’s supply chain activities. We offer predictions regarding the interdependence of the marketing and supply chain variables using monthly in-store observations from 62 different retail stores from five different chains, taken over a 24-month period. The in-store observations included price and number of facings, which is combined with data obtained from the manufacturer on case pack quantity and market share data from the ACNielsen HomeScan consumer scanner panel. Results indicate that shelf facings impact the effects of price and case pack quantity on market share. In addition, we explore the strength of relationships across retailers employing everyday low price versus HiLo pricing strategies. Generally, our findings suggest that retailers and suppliers must work to integrate marketing activities and supply chain processes both within and across firms to most effectively serve the consumer at the retail shelf and increase market share.     

CREATING ORDER FORECASTS: POINT‐OF‐SALE OR ORDER HISTORY?

Point‐of‐sale (POS) data, shared by retailers, is often touted as the solution to suppliers' ongoing challenge of accurate order forecasting. However, we find neither empirical evidence of increased order forecast accuracy from the literature, nor consistent use of POS data in suppliers' order forecasting processes. Using a sample containing weekly POS and order data for 10 ready‐to‐eat (RTE) cereal stock‐keeping‐units (SKU's), 7 yogurt SKU's, and 7 canned soup SKU's from 18 retailer distribution centers (DC's) throughout the U.S, our research compares historical POS and order data as order forecasting inputs and finds that POS data does not always outperform order data in terms of order forecast accuracy. While we did find that POS data is a better forecast input in a majority of the forecasts and that on average POS data produces a lower order forecast error, we find that there remain a large number of forecasts where order data is a better predictor than is POS data. Hence, we operationalize this comparison in terms of the frequency and magnitude of order forecast improvement based on POS data. We then hypothesize affecting factors and empirically test these relationships.