Guest editorial

Citation

Glenn Richey, R. (2009), "Guest editorial", International Journal of Physical Distribution & Logistics Management, Vol. 39 No. 7. https://doi.org/10.1108/ijpdlm.2009.00539gaa.001

Guest editorial

Article Type: Guest editorial From: International Journal of Physical Distribution & Logistics Management, Volume 39, Issue 7

About the Guest Editor

R. Glenn Richey(PhD – The University of Oklahoma) is an Associate Professor of International Marketing and Supply Chain Management and the Robert C. and Rosa P. Morrow Faculty Excellence Fellow in The Culverhouse College of Commerce and Business at The University of Alabama. His research interests broadly include international and domestic inter-organizational exchange relationships, business logistics and supply chain management, marketing and management strategy, retailing strategy and finance, resource management, and disaster preparedness and recovery. He has published in peer reviewed scholarly journals including but not limited to Business Horizons, Industrial Marketing Management (IMM), International Journal of Logistics Management (IJLM), International Journal of Physical Distribution & Logistics Management (IJPDLM), Journal of Applied Psychology (JAP), Journal of Business Logistics (JBL), Journal of International Management (JIM), Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science (JAMS), Journal of World Business (JWB), Management Decision, Organizational Dynamics, Supply Chain Management Review, Thunderbird International Business Review, and Transportation Research (TRE). Prior to entering academe, he worked for ten years in purchasing/procurement management, operations management, sales management, retail consulting and supply chain management. Currently, he is on the boards of the Commonwealth Yogurt LLC, Green Light Marketing Group, the Supply Chain Management and Industrial Distribution Symposium (SCMID), and School Page.Net.

This 3rd and final “Supply chain management in times of crisis” special issue focuses specifically on the current scope of and opportunities for future research in disaster management and crisis planning relevant to twenty-first century supply chain management and business logistics. As such, this issue should assist researchers in:

• •

  understanding where the research field currently stands;

• •

  discovering pathways/streams to extended extant research; and

• •

  uncovering theoretical opportunities for developing new streams of study.

The goal of this issue is to develop a repository of extant knowledge for grounding and developing future research. As this field matures, our research must develop a better theoretical footing. This will most likely be done by understanding the breadth and depth of both historical and current research and building a clear perceptive on how to employ extant theory. It is my hope and the hope of all the authors that this issue does precisely that.

The two previous special issues included:

1. 1.

   studies that examined the current strategies being deployed for supply chains in times of crisis; and

2. 2.

   human and humanitarian issues relevant to current and continued study in supply chain management and business logistics.

Specifically, this special issue extends an overview of the scope of research and theory published to date related to the management of supply chains in times of crisis. The goal is to build a coherent conceptual base and to encourage a great deal of additional research in this arena. As such, we title this issue “Supply chain management in times of crisis: defining the scope of the field of research.”

The first paper comes from the nation's leading Industrial (Economics) Distribution Program at Texas A&M University. This article titled “Managing supply chains in times of crisis: a review of literature and insights” was written by Malini Natarajarathinam, Ismail Capar, and Arunachalam Narayanan to cover the scope of the literature specifically. These authors develop a five-dimension framework to classify literature taken from logistics, management science, operations research, and supply chain management. As such, this is the first all encompassing literature review in our field. The study shows that the core focus of current research is honorably practice based and thus focused on managerial description. Most importantly, the paper begins the theme of this issue – we need more research – by defining research gaps for practice and research. If you are beginning a future study, I humbly suggest you begin here with this canvassing of the literature. Additionally, I hope that we can begin to develop some understanding of strategic norms (beyond descriptive practice) based on the authors' extensive review and call for research.

Authors from the world's most productive supply chain/logistics research program (according to Transportation Journal – Carter et al., 2009) developed our second scope based study; “Supply chain security practices in the food industry: do firms operating globally and domestically differ?” In this study, Professors from Michigan State University – Judith M. Whipple, M. Douglas Voss, and David J. Closs – focus on security issues while comparing supply chains trading products internationally with purely domestic trading supply chains. Security research is growing in all fields and is of the utmost importance in business-to-business relationship research. Strategically, this study explores the link between security initiatives and performance. Of issue is communications related to the supply chain's ability to detect and recover asset losses relevant to security incidents. I am highly motivated to point out that this work expresses the extreme importance of building international research in this field, relating supply chain crisis and disaster programs to ultimate performance, and presenting an early typology of firms that future studies should flesh out.

The 3rd study incorporates a new theoretical prospective underused in supply chain and logistics research to examine antecedents and consequences. Extending the security discussions already gaining importance in our literature and practice, Zachary Williams, Jason E. Lueg, Ronald D. Taylor, and Robert L. Cook offer us “Why all the changes? An institutional theory approach to exploring the drivers of supply chain security (SCS).” In this deep qualitative study the authors uncover empirical richness that supports an institutional theoretic. Using an institutional grounding, their study explores environmental antecedents to firm engagement in supply chain security practices. Findings indicate that antecedents include traditional institutional stakeholders: government, customers, competitors, and society. The authors make it quite clear that more exploration of environmental influence is needed across these stakeholders. In addition, I suggest that these issues should be set as controls if the concepts are not to be researched directly in future studies. Furthermore, it appears some combination of institutional theory and stakeholder theory could add value to the research.

In study four, I include my own short conceptual piece to conclude the final issue. In “The supply chain crisis and disaster pyramid: a theoretical framework for understanding preparedness and recovery,” I discuss the inclusion of four important theories that may be used in many studies that examine supply chains in times of crisis. The pyramid confers the importance of resource-based theory (or view) and relates it to communication theory, relationship management theories, and competing values theory. Following this discussing, I point out ways to study interactions among the theories that could improve both the descriptive quality and theoretical depth of our research. It is my hope that this small inclusion will spark new ideas and improve theoretical grounding.

Finally, I have a large number of people to thank. I would first like to thank the Editors of IJPDLM – Mike Crum (one of my most important mentors) and Dick Poist – for allowing these issues to become a reality. Without their vision, we would have nothing. Second, I need to thank the reviewers who endured this labor of love with me. I have been involved with reviewing and running review processes for a decent amount of time now. I must say I am in awe of the quality of the reviews we received for these issues. I owe these people much praise. Next – I want to thank the authors who were amazingly patient and went through multiple and detailed reviews (one review was 17 pages, single spaced, ten point font). This includes several authors who had their papers declined. We had a truly great group of papers and it was tough to send some of the quality works away. I am sure all the quality submissions we received will be published soon, even if not in IJPDLM.

Finally, and most importantly, I want to thank Ruth Heppenstall and Lucy Sootheran of Emerald Group Publishing Limited. These women are fantastic professionals who were able to keep me on task even when I was traveling abroad extensively. Without Ruth and Lucy, these issues may never have been completed. More importantly, they had the task of making sure I did not look like a fool in the development of these three special issues – no small task indeed. Cheers to Ruth and Lucy. Thanks very much to everyone.

R. Glenn RicheyGuest Editor