French winemakers shipping wine from France to Ireland…by sail ship…in 2008!
It will be interesting to see if, or perhaps more importantly, how other companies follow this path of distribution and how the company itself, Compagnie de Transport Maritime à la Voile, will develope.
This reminds me of a recent Call for Papers on The sustainable agenda & energy efficiency, Logistics solutions and supply chains in times of climate change.
Skál (cheers)
Árni
Posted in Socks and sandals, Sustainability
Academics are more often than not required to work in all of the three areas of teaching, research and service – the latter commonly also called “administration”, as it’s not all about outreach to the community but rather, keeping a university going. This leads to an ongoing debate on whether teaching is done at the expense of research, whether one can be only good at some of these tasks but not all etc. This reminds me of a survey (coming some years ago from the University of Porto) that asked about our teaching loads; a tricky question in itself. How are teaching loads defined anyway? In-class teaching varies a lot in intensity and preparation depending on level, type of “lecture” and interaction, number of students etc.
More seriously, at least related to teaching and research, marketing scholars have now investigated the effects of research (quantified as academic publishing) on MBA education. Mitra and Golder (2008) indeed found that research has a positive effect on MBA programmes, though more in terms of their reputation and subsequent recruitment than education itself. Time to join the debate on their blog!
Gyöngyi
PS. Though it is lamentable how scant articles on logistics education are, there are also good news, e.g. Gravier and Farris’ (2008) analysis of logistics pedagogical literature that just appeared in IJLM.
What is supply chain management? And where is it? is an old question posted by Paul Larson and Árni Halldórsson (in fact, the title of one of their articles). At some point SCM followed the evergreen question of logistics research about theory, and logistics theory building, and articles started to appear on this topic. But the time is not always right for such big questions – except, it appears to have been right now. The Journal of Business Logistics, Journal of Supply Chain Management and International Journal of Logistics Management all dedicated their recent issues to SCM theory. The only questions that remain are, what is it, and where is it?
Gyöngyi
PS. Another SCM theory related CFP is out right now – the Journal of Supply Chain Management calls for papers on “Supply networks: theories and models“. Deadline Dec 31, 2008
Posted in Supply Chain Management, Theory
The International Journal of Physical Distribution and Logistics Management calls for papers on “The sustainable agenda and energy efficiency: logistics solutions and supply chains in times of climate change”. Deadline Mar 31, 2009; Until it’s not on the Emerald website contact the special issue editors Árni Halldórsson and Gyöngyi Kovács to receive the CFP 
Gyöngyi
Update on Sep 15: now it is on the website – you can access the CFP here.
The very same number of the Journal of Supply Chain Management publishing Oliver E. Williamson‘s SCM-related article was dedicated to the debate of bridging the gap between research and practice. Funnily, it had articles on both rigor vs. relevance (or, a rather serious debate on headlinitis in SCM research), as well as Tom (John T) Mentzer questioning whether researchers would indeed need to choose between the two. True, why wouldn’t we strive for BOTH rigor and relevance? Finally a fruitful debate in the discipline!
Funny is also the application of SCM thinking to the discipline itself. So the very same article presents a process model of SC scholarship. A bit in the vein of the old IJPDLM article on the supply chain of publishing (or rather, the “supply circle” of publishing) that reflects on the suppliers (authors), customers (=audience = authors and potential authors) and operational entities (=reviewers & editors = authors and former authors) of academic publishing. Rigor might be attested in this process, but what about relevance (vs. headlinitis)?
Gyöngyi
Three amigos revisited? Think again. SCM has many more amigos that want to join, at least according to JBL’s first ever special issue (Vol.29 No.1). First Frankel et al. discuss SCM as a domain stemming from the four disciplines purchasing, operations management, logistics and marketing channels, but then Mentzer et al. instantly counter with an article evaluating SCM’s relationships to logistics, marketing, production, and operations management. Hm. Contrary to the separation of these disciplines when it comes to journal rankings, I believe the differences between all of these amigos are kind of blurry. Therefore I would like to join in Atle Nordli’s call for a blind-taste test (not unlike the Pepsi Challenge case), presenting scholars from all of these disciplines with forthcoming articles in any of the SCM-related journals, letting to guess them which journal is going to publish it. Atle’s hypothesis is that there is little to no difference between, say, JOM and SCM:IJ, TR:E, IJPE and JBL etc. (spin it further as you wish), as all the amigos nowadays refer to the concept of supply chain management, and claim to be in this “new” field. Anyone up for the challenge?
Gyöngyi
