Guest editorial

Citation

(2006), "Guest editorial", International Journal of Physical Distribution & Logistics Management, Vol. 36 No. 2. https://doi.org/10.1108/ijpdlm.2006.00536baa.001

Guest editorial

Britta Gammelgaard is an Associate Professor at Copenhagen Business School in Denmark. Britta is known for her deep engagement in the organization and development of logistics research, especially in the annual Nordic Conference for Nordic Researchers in Logistics. She was the chair of the 2005 NOFOMA Conference, from which the papers of this special issue have been collected. Britta's research interests are the driving forces in the organization of Logistics & Supply Chain Management. Her research has been published in, for example, the Journal of Business Logistics and the International Journal of Physical Distribution & Logistics Management.

Remko van Hoek is a visiting Professor of Supply Chain Management at the Cranfield School of Management, UK and can be reached at: vanhoekr@hotmail.com.

The 17th NOFOMA Conference was held at Copenhagen Business School (CBS) in Denmark in 2005. A little more than 100 people attended this regional logistics research conference. Sixty-seven papers were presented at the conference, out of which 45 were categorised as so-called competitive papers. As NOFOMA always has focused strongly on early research and doctoral students, the conference included two categories of papers: competitive and non-competitive papers. It was up to the authors to categorize a given paper, but most competitive papers that were not selected for the proceedings still had a chance to be presented at the conference. In this way, the authors received feedback on how to improve their papers. A total of 68 papers were submitted as competitive papers, out of which 45 papers successfully passed through the selection process and were included in the conference proceedings. The selection process involved acceptance of an abstract, a double-blind review process in two rounds and a final decision by the Scientific Board of the conference. A total of 22 papers were presented as non-competitive. The initiative to the Educators Conference at the 2004 conference in Linköping, Sweden, was followed up in Copenhagen, and of course the Doctoral Workshop, Nordlog, initiated in 1996, was also scheduled for the 2005 conference. These two events took place the day before the annual conference and fostered a good deal of discussion and networking.

The theme of the 2005 conference was “Lost in translation: local practice versus global trends?” The title reflects discussions at CBS on the recent years' globalization of business as well as research and teaching. At universities all over the world, efforts have intensified to get their “products”, i.e. research, into the global “market of research”, i.e. the international scientific journals. These journals and their reviewers play an important role in determining the topics and standards of research methods. As universities are increasingly competing globally, they tend to use ranking lists of journals, which means that researchers all over the world compete to get their papers published in a relatively small number of journals. The inevitable effect of these processes is a conformation of research in terms of topics and methods, the so-called paradigms. In many ways, this is a tremendous advantage as research can be understood and developed by many. However, a drawback is that research may loose its dynamics, tensions, battles, etc. if only one or a few paradigms are accepted in the journals of global reach. In our view, regional research conferences may add value to research by providing research diversity, especially if it challenges the prevailing research paradigms. Through the conference title, we wish to point to the potential strength of such conferences as well as future regional conferences.

In our attempt to gain global outreach, we would once again like to thank the IJPDLM for publishing this special issue featuring the best papers presented at the conference. We would also like to thank Remko van Hoek, the former European Editor of the journal, for guiding the process, including the extra review of the selected papers together with the conference's Scientific Committee. Finally, we would like to thank the reviewers of the conference papers, on whose work the selection of the best papers was based.

The papers selected for the special issue include first of all the winner of the SCHENKER Best Paper Award, “Collaborative logistics management and the role of third party logistics providers” by Gunnar Stefansson, Chalmers University of Technology, Gothenburg, Sweden. The paper takes its point of departure in the increase of logistics outsourcing in both volume and geographical reach. The development has resulted in a growing number of actors involved in the new logistics set-ups. Stefansson has clarified who the actors are and their roles in the set-ups. From a theoretical perspective, we get an overview of the division of work in collaborative logistics management and the implications for practice, presenting a clear picture of the organization of global logistics set-ups.

Logistics and the SCM theory recommend integration of activities and processes in the supply chain. In their paper “Interacting standards – a basic element in logistics frameworks”, Fabbe-Costes, Jahre and Rouquet from Université de la Méditerranée-Aix-en-Marseille II and the Norwegian School of Management shed light on standards as the primary coordination mechanism in supply chains and networks. They see the standards as important resources in facilitating the material flow.

Wong and Johansen, both from Aalborg University, Denmark, analyze JIT-retailing and the organizational processes towards success of this distribution form in the article “Making JIT retail a success: the coordination journey”. They build their analysis on a longitudinal case study of highly seasonal products, namely toys, and conclude that operations management models are not adequate to secure successful JIT-deliveries. To secure efficient coordination in the supply chain, it is necessary to include behavioural theory.

In their article, “A model for designing multiple product logistics networks”, Hongze Ma and Chenxia Suo from Turku School of Economics and Business Administration, Finland, and Beijing Institute of Petrol-chemical Technology, China, present a mathematical model, the mixed integer programming model, for the design of multiple product logistics networks in an effort to schedule the shortest possible product delivery routes from wholesalers to retailers.

Gribkovskaia and colleagues from Molde University College and Molde Research Institute in Norway also suggest mixed integer programming as a tool for optimizing transportation and transportation costs. However, the focus in their article “Optimization model for a livestock collection problem” is on collecting live animals from farmers and getting them to a slaughter house after duly consideration of animal welfare and production plans at the slaughter houses.

Finally, in his paper “Consequences of the Austrian toll systems for trucks and buses on companies”, Einbock from Vienna University of Economics and Business Administration, Austria, analyzes the consequences of introducing a toll system on Austrian motorways. He also highlights the interaction between logistics and the environment and subsequent ethical decisions, as the toll systems are introduced to decrease the negative effects of transportation on the physical environment, i.e. the beautiful Austrian nature. The analysis points to an interesting implication of the system, which is an intensified use of logistics service providers to improve efficiency in transportation and logistics.

We hope you will enjoy these pieces of local practices within logistics research. But as the author affiliations indicate, the contributors are far from all local Nordic researchers, which is absolutely positive in almost every respect. But this development also poses the question whether local research practices – Nordic or non-Nordic – are vanishing and whether they are worth keeping?

For more information on NOFOMA, please visit the web site: www.nofoma.org

Britta Gammelgaard and Remko van HoekGuest Editors