Supply Chain Management and Logistics: An Editorial Approach for a New Era

Abstract

Our first editorial comes at a momentous time for supply chain management and logistics (SCML) researchers, as well as the practitioners responsible for managing SCML activities. Over the last several months, we have seen global events put the spotlight squarely on our field. Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, the significance of managing supply chains has never been more pronounced. As events continue to unfold, both the strengths and weaknesses of supply chains are being publicly exposed for all to see. This reality opens the door to many questions about the future of SCML, and how the field will be altered in response. SCML leaders will be called on to fix what is broken. They will be challenged to develop more robust strategies and contingency plans to mitigate future supply chain disruptions and related economic, health, and public safety consequences. For the first time, the public has been inundated with daily news reports, press briefings, and political commentary about “the supply chain.” While the discovery of our field has highlighted the significance of SCML, the pundits consistently show a lack of understanding. This creates a complicated set of challenges and opportunities for the field going forward. We are in a pivotal moment that calls for us to educate the public, practitioners, and policymakers about the foundations, decisions, and impact of managing supply chains. The challenge resides in explaining how SCML decisions are often grounded in balancing tradeoffs, which is radically different than the absolutism prevalent in media and politics today. But this opportunity should not be wasted—our community must embrace our mission to generate and disseminate knowledge that highlights and advances the SCML discipline. As these and other unexpected challenges and opportunities in the SCML landscape continue to unfold, we look forward to fully embracing the role as Editors-in-Chief for JBL. After many years in our JBL roles as reviewers, AEs, and authors, we were honored to be selected by the community to lead the journal from 2021 to 2025. We appreciate the conscientious and often thankless volunteer work that comes from those of you who are committed to JBL’s continued success. We want to extend special thanks to our colleagues Tom Goldsby, Walter Zinn, Stan Fawcett, Matt Waller, Pat Daugherty, Jim Stock, Dave Closs, and all the past editors who made tremendous strides in improving the reputation and visibility of JBL. We hope that with this opportunity—and with the support of the SCML community—we will carry on the tradition. As scholars committed to advancing the journal, we have outlined distinct priorities and guiding precepts for moving forward. First, we understand that the quality of our research is reflected in the bar we set as “gatekeepers” in managing the review process. We realize that the rigor of both the research and the review process gives the academic community the unique ability to offer credible claims and assertions about SCML phenomena. Second, we acknowledge the importance of research that makes a theoretical contribution to extend a study’s findings beyond its specific time and place, and to accumulate a systematic and cohesive body of SCML knowledge. Finally, and most importantly to us, we believe it is the obligation of SCML scholars in business schools to produce relevant research that advances business practice and offers meaningful insights to decision makers and other relevant stakeholders, especially those stakeholders aligned with CSCMP. With these priorities in mind when considering the JBL editor role, it became clear that we needed to know what the community had in mind for the journal. Although JBL is owned by CSCMP, it is fundamentally shaped by its authors, reviewers, and readers. For insight, we deployed a survey to understand the needs and wants of the community. In developing the questions, we got feedback from several members of the JBL editorial board and made calls to authors around the world. We sent the survey to the most recent attendees of the last three CSCMP Academic Research Symposia (ARS), which resulted in an 88% response rate of 223 authors, reviewers, and readers. Consistent with our own scholarly priorities, the survey feedback helped us build a five-year plan for the journal. Therefore, during our service as Editors-in-Chief, we hope to move the journal forward in the areas that follow. From the survey responses, the top issue related to the review process. Expediting the review process is a common request for all journals, but it came as no surprise that folks in a discipline that emphasizes timeliness want a quicker cycle time! After examining the review process for other journals, we noted that the number of reviews per manuscript has increased dramatically. Some journals were providing five and six reviews plus an associate editor comment. We saw little evidence that the additional critiques significantly added value, but they certainly do add time to the process. Our contention is that a simplified structure is warranted. However, to also ensure the quality and rigor of the review process, we must rely on a committed set of SCML scholars who will help us be the “gatekeepers.” As such, we will elevate those scholars to a Senior Editor (SE) role. This change mandates an adjustment to the review board and to the development of new reviewer accountability metrics. With this structure, our goal is to employ two reviewers and one SE for each submission. A quicker review cycle requires that we select a team of three that can evaluate the manuscript’s content, contribution, and method at the onset of the review cycle. Differing slightly from traditional Associate Editors, we emphasize that the responsibilities of a SE are both operational and strategic. Operationally, we expect that SEs will provide an independent review of the manuscript and then make a recommendation based on their own assessment and the feedback offered by the two other reviewers. On a more strategic level, we need SEs to be our advisors and ambassadors for JBL. With the support of the community, our hope is that implementing this process will bring constructive reviews, expedite the decision process, and lead to high-quality publications. Another issue highlighted by the community is the total number research manuscripts published per year. JBL averaged 15 published manuscripts per year over the course of 2017–2019. Our survey revealed that 80% of the community would like to see JBL grow to 40 publications a year. Because JBL remains the only recognized SCML journal at many US schools, it creates intense pressure for SCML faculty to successfully move a manuscript through the review process and get one of the few coveted spots in a JBL issue. While this approach sets the bar high, it also restricts some scholars from succeeding with tenure and/or promotion. We are confident that the community is engaging in rigorous SCML research that we can and should publish. Likewise, our Wiley representative (JBL’s publishing company) offered an analysis that finds that more total annual publications can increase a journal’s reputation and impact factor. Therefore, our goal is to increase the current annual average of 15 by 5 manuscripts per year to reach 40 annual research manuscript publications by 2025. This is a lofty goal that will require massive community effort and an effective promotional strategy. Our next few months will be busy. We are in the process of hiring an editorial assistant who will work full time for the journal. We also plan to send personal invitations to the community as we implement the new editorial board structure. We need input on how to maintain our current industry connections and forge new ones with the companies that attend the CSCMP Edge Conference. We also encourage immediate suggestions about how to further enhance the JBL Editorial Review Board meetings, expand our journal awards, and disseminate stakeholder insights from JBL articles to a broader community. We will begin to accept new manuscript submissions as EICs on October 1, 2020, but we will continue to defer editorial responsibilities and decision making for manuscripts submitted prior to October 1 to Drs. Goldsby and Zinn. As such, in writing this editorial, we were also charged with introducing four outstanding research manuscripts shepherded through the review process under their guidance in Issue 41, Volume 2. The articles in this issue offer additional knowledge and insight on three key SCML activities: inventory positioning, relationship management, and sustainable supply chain management. Reinvigorating seminal work on postponement (see Waller, Dabholkar, and Gentry 2000; Chiou, Wu, and Hsu 2002) and guided further by recent insight (see Zinn 2019), Drs. Prataviera et al. (2020) examine the need for firms to reconsider inventory positioning in “Postponement Strategies for Global Downstream Supply Chains: a Conceptual Framework.” This work examines the importance of customization, location, and timeliness when designing global postponement strategies. The manuscript presents a strategic examination of the global postponement environment, taking a forward movement and downstream focus. The framework presented by the authors offers compelling insight for firms that are evaluating their postponement strategies, and it opens the door for additional postponement research in an ever-changing global supply chain environment. Continuing the inventory positioning theme, Blair et al. (2020) examine the often-overlooked importance of managing critical spare parts supply in “Managing Critical Spare Parts within a Buyer-Supplier Dyad: Buyer Preferences for Ownership and Placement.” They underscore the reality that ineffective management of spare and replacement parts supply can create serious service gaps, yet attention to managing parts supply is often overlooked in the strategic planning process. Updating classic work in JBL, the authors note the importance of consignment-based inventory approaches and postponement (see Pagh and Cooper 1998). They extend previous work by supporting that a buyers’ preference for holding title, positioning of spare parts inventory, part specificity, and supply uncertainty are key to understanding a buyers’ future intentions. Additional research can build upon this work by examining how service consistency, quality, and relationships are impacted by decisions and strategies related to parts supply. Croxton et al. (2020) investigate the consistently relevant issue of supply chain relationship management in “Do Supply Chain Exemplars Have More or Less Dependent Suppliers?” Supported by extant literature in relationship management (see Ellinger et al. 2011; Krause and Ellram 2014), the authors examine whether buying firms benefit from supplier dependency. Examining 3,000 supplier relationships, the authors develop a portfolio-level measure (see Tokman et al., 2007) of buyer–supplier dependence, taking into consideration both the pros and cons of dependence. Researchers and managers should take note that superior supply chains have suppliers with lower levels of dependency. Is this the collaboration effect? We agree there is significant room for a return to classic and evolving questions about supplier and buyer dependency in relationships that the authors advance in their suggestions for future research. Finally, in “Do Firms Spend More on Suppliers That Have Environmental Expertise? An Empirical Study of U.S. Manufacturers’ Procurement Spend,” authors Mukandwal et al. (2020) address the increasingly important need for incorporating environmental considerations into strategic supply management (see Eroglu, Kurt, and Elwakil, 2016). This research examines whether a supplier’s environmental expertise influences a buying firm’s purchases. Employing a unique buyer–supplier dyadic data set, the study supports a willingness by buyers to increase spending with suppliers that have environmental expertise. The relationship is enhanced when the buying firm is financially healthy and positioned to learn from suppliers. However, when executive compensation is linked to a firm’s environmental, social, and governance performance, the relationship turns negative. Perhaps in some cases, executives can avoid needed investments by leveraging their suppliers’ environmental capabilities to hedge against stakeholder scrutiny. When there is a financial incentive to make those investments, however, it appears as though the decision calculus changes. The complexity of this relationship points to the need for more detailed research in understanding the decision-making nuances related to sustainable supply chain management (SSCM) considerations (Nath, Eweje, and Bathurst 2020).