Interorganisational - Supply Chain Management

Why do we organise and attend academic conferences? Yes, here it comes, it’s the debate that matters. Discussing ideas, refining our arguments, getting feedback, input, maybe even co-operation partners. Unfortunately, this seems to be lost at some conferences. More and more academics only attend with papers of their “honours students”, reluctant to share their ideas, not wanting to even hint what they are actually working on. One may suspect they have no own ideas

It’s funny how people think one may steal their brilliant idea. Sure, it happens, but such unethical behaviour always comes right back at those who do this. But usually the one who came up with an idea has a first mover advantage in any case (or does s/he?); having developed it much further than any copy-cat could follow up.

But well, it is a competitive environment, and I was just confronted with what a difference it can make to live in a publish-or-perish climate. If you don’t steal the other’s idea you’ll at least attempt to shoot it down at a conference… Where did the common goal of advancing science disappear? Publish or (and?) perish has been argued to kill the spirit of higher education, it seems to now kill the spirit of academic conferences. I have started to understand the EU’s stance of having to combine efforts for grant applications; it forces you to collaborate and to discuss your research throughout the process. It’s just sad we need to be forced to do so…

Gyöngyi

Buzzwords, here we go again. Is there anybody out there who can explain to me what “generation 3 supply chain principles” would be? What about generation 2 principles? And what was generation 1?

Just some other trivial issues, Wal-Mart has apparently predicted that “strawberry Pop Tarts and beer would be the top-selling items in Florida’s 2004 hurricane disaster zone”. Interesting. Those who are interested in more such research, check out Hartston’s “The Drunken Goldfish: A Celebration of Irrelevant Research“. Or publish “generation 3 SCM research” in journals such as the
- (Int’l) Journal of Irrelevant Trivia and Research
- Journal of Irrelevant Results
- Journal of Irrelevant Information etc.
More such journals - or suggestions for their creation - can be found in the “reference list” of this lovely paper on - errh - water. The relevance of such research itself is then again even debated in New Scientist. There might be hope for some of our irrelevant - sorry, G3 SCM - papers after all.

Gyöngyi

What’s the implication of a writer’s block for SCM? You’d be surprised, this article makes the comparison between neurological networks (or neural networks, if you please) and business networks. And I thought the article on Amish furniture supply chains (or was it a cluster in the end?) was the funniest I had seen in a long time…

Here’s an excerpt from the writer’s block:

‘”Writer’s block” is the common term used to describe certain failures of the neurological network of the human brain . . . Of special concern . . . are the problems of bringing creativity to fruition in the completion or presentation of original work to a wider audience. This can be a daunting experience because of the onset of nerves, anxiety, time pressures and the anticipation of criticism from the person’s peer group or wider audience.’

Hoping none of the researchers currently at Ipsera feel it right now… But apart from the implications of a writer’s block for business networks (noting that truth drugs won’t help) , interestingly, the article distinguishes between different types of writer’s blocks, one being not the loss of writing skills, but the loss of the spark of originality. My special favourite is Malcolm Cunningham’s reflection #3 for academics and managers:

‘It has been pointed out that some creative writers, when going through the effects of writer’s block, tend to produce dull repetitive output . . . However, there is clear evidence that healthy academics also turn up at conferences with papers that are equally dull and repetitions of former papers.’

Let’s hope we bloggers won’t suffer from such a block… (though we might be able to buy one from Calvin - and Hobbes)

Gyöngyi

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