Interorganisational – Supply Chain Management

A while ago, Árni asked the question whether a conference theme mattered. Well, does it? And do track themes matter? They might not get people into particular topics, but yes, set the scope of themes for a conference. And their reoccurrence is yet another indicator for “what is hot and what is not” in supply chain management research. Thus here’s a comparison of track themes (some held, some from the CFPs) across some SCM-relevant academic conferences in 2007 (CSCMP, CSCMP Europe, EUROMA, IPSERA, LRN, NOFOMA, POMS). And here are the winners:

1. Sustainability in the supply chain. Many conferences include reverse logistics and closed-loop supply chains under this heading. What is new is a focus on labour issues in the global supply chain. 

2. Purchasing / global sourcing. This includes anything related to outsourcing. The dominance of the topic is evident as IPSERA was included in the topical “sample” (my bias).

3. Supply chain innovation. Now this is surprising. Innovations, new product developments, new technologies in the supply chain are on the rise as a topic.

4. – Supply chain collaboration, integration, and “alignment”. The latter being preferred by CSCMP Europe.
     - (Operations) planning and control, ops strategy.
     – ICT in the supply chain. Incl. special foci such as on RFID technology, e-supply chains and the such.

5. – Global supply chains / operations. Well, the topic might be too generic to attract that much attention, but “globalisation” is taken up in many other headings as well, such as:
     – Global transportation. Including third party logistics-related issues.
     – Risk management. And resilient supply chains, and managing disruptions.
     – Humanitarian logistics. My favourite As a topic, even logistics in developing countries, and the implications of logistics FOR development hit the eye.
      – Warehousing / inventory management. And, as some conferences combined it, this category includes “physical distribution”. Old-fashioned, but prevailing.

6. – Performance management.
    - Leanness, agility and its variations.
    - Educational matters. Many conferences have educators’ days, but INFORMS even has a teaching-dedicated workshop. And check out POMS’ collection of ops mgmt (and indeed, SCM) course syllabi.

7. – Supply chain design and supply chain strategy.
    – Modelling, simulation and optimisation. In the supply chain, of course.
    – Production and manufacturing management. One could argue that entire POMS focuses on this topic, though.
    – Relationships, and supplier development.
    – New business models.

8. Ex aequo quality management, service operations management, project management, and interestingly, the latter including “event logistics”.

The rest of the topics are one-time appearances. One could of course group them according to some issues, such as industry-specific stuff (healthcare logistics is named in some variations), too generic issues as to be grouped (one track being called “supply chain management”, which reminds me of the “New Valley” tracks at Nofoma 2006 taking on anything ungroupable otherwise – and yes, the Norwegian School of Management had just moved to Nydalen, the “new valley”) etc. More interestingly, some “new topics” entered as well: knowledge management and finance logistics. Funny, these are the same ones as came up during the special issue ranking

Gyöngyi

BTW, some deadlines are coming up soon, e.g. INFORMS‘ (extended) abstract submission deadline is June 1. (INFORMS is not included above due to not pre-defining track names – in vein of Nofoma 2007 not having a conference theme…)