Interorganisational - Supply Chain Management

After receiving it twice within a week, it’s time to have a look at Patrik Jonsson’s new textbook on, as it says, Logistics and Supply Chain Management. As a completely new book it has the advantage of working in SCM thoroughly through all of it - as opposed to 7th editions of other books… Patrik managed to avoid the logistics functions trap, i.e. has chapters on “the material flow” instead of treating each function separately. Well done. Most of the mini-cases in the book are European ones (including many Nordic ones, for all of those who talk about “going to Europe” when crossing the Baltic Sea or the North Sea ), not surprisingly, McGraw-Hill also positioned the book for the European market.

Gyöngyi

PS. A pity it’s written in English, though - I’m hunting for a good book in Swedish for our basic course…

CSCMP has ventured out for several years to different continents. CSCMP Southern Africa was held in March in Johannesburg, right now ongoing is the CSCMP Europe conference in Brussels. It follows pretty much the same format as the original CSCMP one, with a research seminar (which in this case is just not called Educators’ Day and does not publish proceedings but rather sends out papers to be reviewed for the Journal of Business Logistics), and a main, rather practitioner-oriented conference. It’s a nice place for people from different European roundtables to meet - that is, if they come from a country where there is one. Maybe others might feel inspired to establish one…?

Gyöngyi

PS. Presentations of the main conference will be available from the CSCMP website. And the next CSCMP Europe conference will be held in Copenhagen.

Journal rankings are always sensitive questions; no wonder our posts on rankings are among the most viewed ones (here’s the last one). Rankings of SCM journals also exist in abundance, based on surveys among scholars in the field, or on citation indices. As for the latter, many universities have gone over to follow the Thomson ISI ratings to evaluate the publications of their faculty. But while several journals are now in fact in the process of getting an ISI rating, an awful lot of SCM journals have not received one yet. In the meantime, here are some (alternative) citation indices to look at. The “H-index” has been developed as an alternative, even Google Scholar has come out with it’s own calculations. The International Journal of Physical Distribution and Logistics Management, International Journal of Retail and Distribution Management, Journal of Business Logistics, and the Journal of Supply Chain Management get quite impressive ratings in Harzing and van der Wal’s (2007) report.

Another interesting ranking is the SCImago journal and country rank. While SCM journals figure just under the mixed “business” category, it’s fun to look at the country ranks.

All these rankings and ratings boil down to one question: is ISI really just the only one universities should look at? And which consequences does such a decision bear for SCM scholars? Yet, having discussed this at several conferences already, the answer from publishing houses is that it’s up to scholars to promote their journals to be included in the ISI. If enough people recommend a journal to be included in the evaluation, Thomson ISI will take it in. So, let’s start the process of getting our journals in and recommend them!

Gyöngyi

Nay, this is not another dissertation award or best paper of a conference or a journal. Rather, it’s a competition for undergrads (whatever that means in an US context, assuming it’s BSc/BBA students). SCM-related papers can be entered in the competition till May 1, 2008.

Gyöngyi

There are lots of awards for supply chain excellence for corporations - as well as for research. As for the latter, the University of Arkansas just announced its 2008 SCMRC doctoral dissertation award. Dissertation proposals of 15 pages (plus CVs of the applicant and her/his supervisor, and a letter of application) should be submitted by Aug 31 ( 2008 ) to Jim Crowell who also answers questions about the award.

However, there are other awards as well, practically every SCM-related professional organisation has its own award. Some are for dissertation proposals, but more commonly, awards are given for people who have recently finished their doctorate (PhD / DBA / DSc). Mind you, most awards have some regional restrictions; LOGY in Finland only giving awards for people who finished their PhD at a Finnish university etc. Still, here are some to watch out for or to inspire as to where one could find similar awards “at home”:

- One of the awards for young PhDs (anyone who defended their doctoral thesis in logistics / SCM since Jun 1, 2007) is CILT UK’s dissertation award for which applications are due on May 16.

- CSCMP’s dissertation award is usually open for applications by the end of February (past for 2008, but doctoral students should keep this in mind for 2009). Again, this is for young PhDs.

And, apart from these, there are always best paper awards at conferences (LRN, Nofoma, POMS… you name it). Nofoma even gives a special best paper award to doctoral students - BUT, only those qualify who wrote a paper alone and/or with other doctoral students. This is to ensure that it’s not the supervisor’s work

Gyöngyi

Remember when Strategic Outsourcing: an International Journal was launched? (We actually announced it on this blog.) By now the first issue is out already! If you want to get acquainted to the journal, Emerald has in fact granted free access to it until May 9th. Just click on the journal’s name, and use “SOIJissue1″ and “emerald” for your access. You know how it works

Even more importantly, the journal is looking for contributions, and even reviewers. You can contact Marco Busi to get to know more about both.

Gyöngyi

There are a number of interesting new books on the SCM course book market, e.g. HUBS’ co-operative effort of a book on “global logistics and supply chain management“. Having said so, it is always difficult to find THE course book on SCM. Apart from mastering the content, a course-book should be well written, and ideally, be easy to adopt in a particular class. The last bit is tricky as it depends on the level of the class, the focus of the course, as well as e.g. regional interests in particular topics.

Thus a bit more than a year ago we discussed the issue of demand management related to course books. Things obviously changed since then - although publishing houses still visit us way after we have to make our decisions for the next year, some have implemented Árni’s idea of customised books on demand. Apparently a big hit in the US, custom publishing is now entering the European market as well. This will certainly facilitate innovative courses and a differentiation in the “course market”, plus the adaptation of course materials to questions of particular regional interest.

Out of curiosity, has any of you SCM educators used this kind of a system? What are your experiences with it?

Gyöngyi

Emerald has apparently renewed its user interface, as has Elsevier ScienceDirect - the latter adding a neat feature of showing “related articles” to any given one you’ve found. This really helps in finding articles in otherwise less obviously related journals that are anyway related. What a great idea!

Gyöngyi

… who has just found sthg really interesting in the Journal of Computational and Applied Mathematics and in Management Accounting Research, which are honestly not the ones I’d usually look at…

Wow, the research group (and quite an impressive one) on green logistics has caught up! It’s not that long time ago it has been established, and now you can already find several reports and working papers on their website. Definitely worth while to check it out!

Gyöngyi

Finally someone is taking web 2.0, 3.0 and x.0 seriously and wants to write a handbook on its use and implications for research, including social and cultural as well as ethical issues that might arise.

Chapter proposals are due on Apr 5, 2008 and should be sent to San Murugesan (san1@internode.on.net).

Gyöngyi