Happy new year 2013! Here’s some funny analogy between SCM and supply chain music.
The Journal of Humanitarian Logistics and Supply Chain Management is expanding its editorial team and is looking for an Africa regional editor. More specifications to be found here, application deadline Sep 30, 2012.
On that note, there is a current CFP on “Humanitarian logistics education and training” with the same deadline – so if you work with training and/or education in this field, send a paper to the special issue!
Gyöngyi
No, this is not to add to the theories debate, though the doctoral course we are running right now in Turku may do that. There is an astonishing variety of topics among the participants, anything from public procurement to lean manufacturing to assessing logistics costs on the national level to environmental issues in food supply chains… And yet they all face the same challenges:
- What is theory?
- Which one to select for my thesis?
- How to contribute to it?
With the help of Árni Halldórsson (from this blog) and Craig Carter, the course may shed light on some of these questions – though I ask myself if wondering about them isn’t a perpetual quest in (SCM) research.
Gyöngyi
Whether you call it the story of stuff, materials economy, or the story of sustainable, closed loop supply chains, this clip is a nice illustration of how we have traditionally looked at supply chains and their “externalities” and what that does to us. Watch it!
Gyöngyi
Still some years ago, humanitarian logistics was seen as a novel and trendy field – at least in research. In practice, it is a bit more of business as unusual, agile, flexible, responsive, you name it, but still logistics.
Over time, the research buzz has stabilised a bit with dedicated conference, conference tracks, masters and doctoral programmes, and through the Journal of Humanitarian Logistics and Supply Chain Management (JHLSCM). Already prior to that there have been a lot of special issues in different journals (over 10 of these since 2007). Here’s a bit of help for those just starting out in this area:
- Peter Tatham’s bibliography (which is quite frequently updated), and
- Emerald’s ListAssist (compiled and also categorised according to different topics by Ira Haavisto)
Plus a list of special issues apart from JHLSCM:
- IJPDLM: Vol.39 No.5/6/7 and Vol.40 No.8/9
- TRE: Vol.43 No.6
- IJSTM: Vol.12 No.4
- IJRAM: Vol.13 No.1 – and with a current CFP on the topic
- MRN: Vol.32 No.11
- IJPE: Vol.126 No.1 – plus articles for another one can be found in the “articles in press” section
- and other journals such as Omega and POM have special issues in their pipeline.
There are some books as well, many of which have been noted on this blog previously. No need to reinvent the wheel, rather, push the envelope 
That said, one cannot stress it enough that beyond looking at all the publications, humanitarian logistics research also needs to be relevant for practice. And to close the loop between practice and research, here’s a CFP for research on humanitarian logistics education and training.
Gyöngyi
At the forefront of sharing knowledge on how to teach operations management, here are two repositories of ops mgmt syllabi: one of the Academy of Management Operations Management Division (AoM), the other of the Production and Operations Management Society (POMS). There is also a teaching insights page of Emerald – but it would be great to have a similar collection of SCM courses for syllabus development…
Gyöngyi
Edutainment or playful learning? Luckily there are tons of educational games out there. Some new ones I discovered are card games on vaccinations, climate change etc. and a wonderful collection on e-games and also videos for ops mgmt and SCM class. Time to start playing!
Gyöngyi
Some may find it disturbing that not everything has a clear-cut solution. Yet the “managers not MBAs” mantra needs critical thinking and the ability to approach a problem from several dimensions – which is finally also appraised by the New York Times that comprised a story about critical thinking at business schools. Less surprisingly, rethinking the MBA was on the agenda of the “Deans Conference” as well. Just when will “leading” business schools stop discussing SCM teaching cases with a sole solution in mind?
Gyöngyi
PS. Thx to Jonathan Schroeder for the link to the NYTimes article.
Where is the impact of benchmarking exercises? The bestLog project group probably wondered the same when leaving over their results (and from Feb2010, their website) to the European Logistics Association. ELAbestlog includes SCM case studies, reports on logistics education in Europe and an education directory, and at least on the old bestLog website, one could put in their own (European) logistics events. Let’s hope ELA makes the best of it – and updates this website at least a bit more frequently.
Gyöngyi
CSCMP calls for teaching cases – and awards them, too. Full cases as well as mini cases are of interest, importantly, along with teaching notes. The deadline for these “academic cases” is Feb 1, 2010
Gyöngyi
