Perhaps well known by German speaking scholars, but now aiming for a broader audience. Editor-in-chief is Peter Klaus.
Logistics Research intends to the premier medium for the publication of academic research in the fields of Business Logistics and Logistics Engineering in Europe and worldwide.
Here you find the call for papers
Árni
Posted in Academic publications
The latest issue of European Business Forum contains a series of short articles that address the question ‘Is European education fit for purpose?‘. I found it interesting as a background information to consider in a programme development context.
Recently I have come a accross a number of articles that do criticise what universities (or business schools) have to offer to management education. Many of these contributions are responding to Henry Mintzberg’s Managers Not MBAs. We are apparently not getting it right. What I am missing in this debate is the idea of questioning and developing a critical approach — something that is not fit neatly into the category of “tools and techniques”. Every curriculum must certainly teach what is relevant to industry, but there should also be time and space to question the assumptions of these approaches – together with the students.
In this current issue of EBF, Boulton and Lucas* remind us of the role of universities:
‘Crucially, universities provide the setting in which young people are taught to question, to reduce the chaos of information to the order of analytical argument, to seek out the relevant, to identify problems for themselves, and to resolve them by rational argument supported by evidence’.
Árni Halldórsson
*Geoffrey Boulton and Colin Lucas in European Business Forum, Issue 30, Autumn 2007, p. 24.
Remember the SCM index? We love our rankings, hot lists and hit counts. An earlier Kuukausiliite had an interesting way of looking at them, comparing the length of Wikipedia articles (e.g. there being more information about Middle Earth than say, Finland etc.). It certainly puts things into perspective. Here are some SCM-related comparisons:
Logistics (the discipline, remarkably without any references): 1 014 words
Logistics (Matt Gresham, the drum and brass artist, with references): 693 words
Military logistics: 885 words
Business logistics: 214 (remarkably only under “logistics”, no separate entry)
Humanitarian logistics: NO ENTRY
Supply chain: 766 words
Chain saw: 1 427 words
Distribution: 1 929 words
Supply chain network (my favourite of buzzwords): 337 words
Transport: 3 905
Purchasing: 2 543
Operations management: 507
Supply chain management: 3 264
Marketing: 4 296
John Mentzer: 870 words
Harry Potter: 8 148 words
For all of us who didn’t know “logistics” was an artist, here’s an excerpt of his “hits” on MySpace; giving a whole new meaning to the SCM hit list 
Gyöngyi
Posted in Socks and sandals
Finally a CFP for teaching issues in SCM! The Institute for Supply Management organises te 19th Annual North American Research and Teaching Symposium. The abstract deadline is Oct 26 already, it’s a race to secure places!
Gyöngyi
That’s in fact the conclusion of the newest article on skills for logistics – there is more to logistics than meets the eye. Another conclusion is that logistics is not a stand-alone discipline but part of SCM. Interestingly, many previous disciplines that fought each other and vindicated “the truth” for themselves, nowadays arrive to the same conclusion. Ask an “operations manager” what his field is, the answer will be SCM. The same goes for purchasers. And logisticians. And transportation managers… Even if SCM is not to be equalled with either of the disciplines, all see it as an umbrella term they could belong to.
But back to skills for logistics. Murphy and Poist have just updated their BLM model (standing for business, logistics, and management). Interestingly, management skills are more important than “core” logistics skills when it comes to senior logisticians. And yes, the trend is towards supply chain orientation. Nice to see a longitudinal study confirming the hunch we had all along
Gyöngyi
It will be most interesting to see whether and how TeacherTube will be adapted by teachers in business schools. I first heard of this at deanstalk.net
Today, there are 201 entries that include “supply chain” on Youtube, and only 24 include “supply chain management” (7 hits in our search on February 18th 2007, cf. this entry on the ‘SCM index‘).
Students, what do you think?
Árni
Here is an interesting paper by Dag Naslund on ‘Online testing for logistics and operations management‘ (Decision Sciences Journal of Innovative Education, Vol. 3, No. 2, pp. 357-365). Dag presents some challenges and benefits of online assessment that also has implication for the design of the exam.
During my time at Copenhagen Business School, Denmark, the majority of the assessment of the learning outcome was based on written assignments, usually combined with an oral examination of a group of 2-4 students. In Southampton, UK, the assessment primarily based on written work (written exam, assignments, dissertation) only. I can see the benefits and vulnerability of both forms, but welcome reflections that include the electronic media.
In case you want to learn more about IT and teaching effectiveness, here is Faculty 2.0.
Árni
Some time ago, CSCMP had a call for cases; the resulting submissions of which should be published by the beginning of next year. If anyone is writing a good case for SCM education, it is surely worthwhile to check out their guidelines. In the meantime, there are some older cases available from the CSCMP website, both for practitioners and for educators. But there are other cases for SCM education as well, e.g. collected in a Nordic case reader, available from the University Press of Southern Denmark. The nice point about these is that they come with teaching notes if one signs up as an educator at the Nofoma webpage.
Gyöngyi
Radiohead is giving their new album away by allowing free download (+ admin fee) from their website.
Prince gave away his new album in July this year with the newspaper The Mail on Sunday.
And from music to books that are of interest for a number of SCM scholars:
von Hippel’s Democratizing Innovation from 2005 can also be downloaded here in a .pdf form, or alternatively bought at Amazon.
Going Backwards: Reverse Logistics Trends and Practices by Dale Rogers and Ronald Tibben-Lembke is also available in a .pdf format.
Wonder when (or perhaps there already are?) MP3 players or mobile phones allow you to read pieces of a book in a suitable format (including notetaking)?
Product development, where art thou?
Árni
Posted in Innovation, Product development, supply chain
And the back door is…? The supply chain, of course. No, it’s not only about markets and the intention to enter these – companies abide by the laws and regulations of other countries due to their suppliers as well. Charlemagne concluded with a “Brussels rules OK” last week, and when it comes to the topic of carbon emissions, the Economist saw a “change in the weather” at US companies. This is good news for regulators; they are back on the ball regarding corporate responsibility. The question is, what they’ll do with it…
Gyöngyi
