Welcome to this blog on InterOrganisational issues in business management in general, and in particular those we find within the realm of Supply Chain Management.
The idea of using the Internet to reach out to a wider audience, interact with fellow researchers and business managers in a real-time setting emerged in discussions with my colleague Professor Paul D. Larson almost seven years ago. We presented the idea to business managers at a seminar at the University of Nevada, Reno, in the Spring 2000. Subsequently we wrote a conference paper on the subject in 2001.
But why blogging?
Last year I read an interesting article by Jonathan Schwartz in Harvard Business Review (2005), who states: “If You Want to Lead, Blog” (a blog about this article is here).
Managers are bloggers.
Conversation among scholars (authors, editors, reviewers, readers) is very important, as noted in this article by Perry et. al (2003), and sometimes it finds it’s way into academic journals. Take for example the reaction Mintzberg’s “Developing Managers Not MBA’s” created in Academy of Management: Learning & Education (Vol. 4, No. 2, 2005).
These conversations may be provoking, but they are very interesting, and have helped me to view my own subject area of resarch and teaching from alternative viewpoints. However, in my search of this provocation, I usually have to look beyond academic journals on my subject area. This style of writing and discussing is rare, but hopefully the blog sphere can enable a sober, critical, but constructive debate among scholars, managers, and others who are interested in interorganisational issues and supply chain management.
Is this a pipedream, or can we “push the envelope” through blogging?
The conversation between economics and their “sociologically minded critics” has found its way into blogging, and I fully believe that the fundamentals of the interorganisational issues and supply chain management can benefit from this mode of conversation.
Academics are also bloggers!
Árni
