Guest editorial

Citation

Tokman, M. and Beitelspacher, L.S. (2011), "Guest editorial", International Journal of Physical Distribution & Logistics Management, Vol. 41 No. 7. https://doi.org/10.1108/ijpdlm.2011.00541gaa.001

Guest editorial

Article Type: Guest editorial From: International Journal of Physical Distribution & Logistics Management, Volume 41, Issue 7

About the Guest Editors

Mert Tokman(PhD, University of Alabama) is an Assistant Professor of Marketing and Supply Chain Management in the College of Business at James Madison University. His research interests include business-to-business relationship marketing, distribution channel management, and supply chain networks. His research has appeared in the International Journal of Physical Distribution & Logistics Management, Journal of Business Logistics, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Journal of Retailing, Industrial Marketing Management, Journal of Business Research, Journal of Business Venturing, Journal of Brand Management, Journal of Management and Organization and Multinational Business Review.

Lauren Skinner Beitelspacher(PhD, University of Alabama) is an Assistant Professor at The University of Alabama at Birmingham. Her research interests focus on supply chain management, retail supply chains, services within the retail supply chain, and retailing pedagogy. Her research has been published in International Journal of Physical Distribution & Logistics Management, Industrial Marketing Management, Journal of Business Logistics, Journal of Personal Selling and Sales Management, Journal of Business Research and Marketing Education Review, and numerous academic conferences. Lauren has been recognized numerous times for her advances in teaching and for her role as a mentor and advisor to students.

The 5th Annual Supply Chain Management and Industrial Distribution (SCMID) Symposium hosted by Society of Marketing Advances (SMA) Conference was held in Atlanta, Georgia on November 3-4, 2010. More than 30 academics, practitioners, and doctoral students attended this symposium and continued the growing tradition set by earlier SCMID Symposiums.

In June 2010, we received a total of 19 full manuscripts for the supply chain management and logistics management track of the SMA Conference. After a double blind review process, the reviewers chose three best papers for presentation during the one-day SCMID Symposium. The event took place the day before the annual SMA Conference and fostered a good deal of discussion and networking among academics and practitioners, who included supply chain executives from the Coca-Cola Company headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia.

As the co-chairs of both the SCMID Symposium and the Supply Chain Management Track at SMA 2010, Dr Beitelspacher and I would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone in the supply chain management and industrial distribution community who made these events successful including the reviewers, the participants, and perhaps most of all the authors.

The three best papers presented at SCMID receive the following awards: the Bowersox Award for Best Paper in Supply Chain Management, The Stern and El-Ansary Award for Best Paper in Marketing Channels, and the Robicheaux Award for the Best Doctoral Student Paper. In addition, this year we have also recognized one other article as an honorable mention. In this special issue of International Journal of Physical Distribution & Logistics Management (IJPDLM), the readers will find these four-award winning manuscripts as well as a call for further research in the area of supply chain management and service-dominant logic.

The article titled “Assessing the managerial relevance of contemporary supply chain management research” by Rodney W. Thomas, C. Clifford Defee, Wesley S. Randall, and Brent Williams received the Bowersox Award for Best Paper in Supply Chain Management. Thomas et al.’s study examines the relevance of supply chain management research to the practitioner’s world. The main research question in this manuscript is whether recent academic research addresses the areas considered important by supply chain managers. The authors conduct an empirical study to compare high-impact supply chain issues identified by supply chain managers with recent research topics in leading academic supply chain management and logistics journals. The manifest finding in Thomas et al.’s study is the lack of correspondence between the most important issue identified by supply chain managers and the most recent research topics. The supply chain managers interviewed for this study identified the “need for a clearly identifiable supply chain organization and structural alignment” as the most important issue they are facing. Thomas et al. classify this issue under the research category of human resource management which, they found, has received the least attention from academics among all recognized research categories. The findings of this study lead to the need to conduct more research in the area where supply chain and human resource management intersects.

Gensheng (Jason) Liu and George D. Deitz’s article titled “Linking supply chain management with mass customization capability” received the Stern and El-Ansary Award for Best Paper in Marketing Channels. This study identifies the supply chain activities that potentially affect a company’s mass customization ability and builds a framework to examine the impact of supply chain activities on company’s mass customization ability. Liu and Deitz’s research identifies three specific supply chain activities: supply chain planning, supplier lead-time reduction, and customer focus. They collected survey data from 262 multi-industry, multi-country plant managers on the three supply chain activities and the company’s mass customization capabilities. Their findings suggest that a direct and positive relationship exists between supplier lead-time reduction and mass customization abilities as well as customer focus and mass customization abilities. The impact of supply chain planning on mass customization abilities, on the other hand, is not direct but mediated through supplier lead-time reduction and customer focus. Liu and Deitz’s manuscript provides a highly sought after empirical link between formalized supply chain activities and successful mass customization.

Jon F. Kirchoff, Chris Koch, and Bridget Satinover Nichols, won the Robicheaux Award for the Best Doctoral Student Paper. Their article titled “Stakeholder perceptions of green marketing: the effect of demand and supply integration” fit perfectly with the 2010 SMA conference theme – “Going Green.” In this manuscript, Kirchoff, Koch, and Nichols extend the demand and supply integration (DSI) paradigm to the domain of environmental responsibility and green marketing. The authors build a conceptual argument and propositions that link consumer perceptions of a company’s environmental commitment to the firm’s green supply chain activities. Basing their case on stakeholder theory, the authors propose that the consumers’ perceptions of environmental commitment will be more affirmative when the firm is able to successfully manage and coordinate marketing and supply chain management functions. Such coordination ensures that the marketing communication seen and/or heard by the consumers is in congruence with the experiences they receive when purchasing, using, and disposing of the advertised items. This manuscript is not only a pioneer in linking the concept of DSI to the green marketing and green supply chain management literatures but also an advocate for more scenario-based experimental research in supply chain management.

John F. Kros, R. Glenn Richey, Jr, Haozhe Chen, and S. Scott Nadler’s manuscript titled “Technology emergence between mandate and acceptance: an exploratory examination of RFID” was presented during the SMA Conference and given the honorable mention recognition. In this article, Kros et al. focus on radio frequency identification (RFID) adoption by supply chain managers and they study the impact of three drivers: a company’s satisfaction with existing logistics technologies, the firm’s logistics technology readiness, and partner relationship hostage – on RFID adoption. Their findings suggest that all three drivers have a significant impact on a firm’s acceptance of RFID technology. Moreover, they find that RFID acceptance plays an important role in logistics performance. As the RFID technology gains more attention from both academics and practitioners, Kros et al.’s study establishes important links among the acceptance of RFID technology, critical organizational resources, and logistical performance.

This special issue concludes with a call for further research in the area of supply chain management and service-dominant logic. In the paper presented during the 2010 SMA Conference and titled “Supply chain networks and service-dominant logic: suggestions for future research,” Mert Tokman and Lauren S. Beitelspacher develop an illustration of the value co-creation concept from the supply chain perspective and use this illustration as a guide to examine the research gaps that are yet to be tapped in the area where supply chain networks and service-dominant logic intersects. The authors identify three main categories of research gaps that include:

1. 1.

   Gaps in utilization of internal operant resources by suppliers, manufacturers, and intermediaries.

2. 2.

   Gaps in knowledge exchange and operant resource utilization between suppliers, manufacturers, and intermediaries.

3. 3.

   Gaps in knowledge exchange and operant resource utilization between end-users and value co-creation network partners.

This categorization offers a structure from which more systematic research may be produced on the topic of service-dominant logic in supply chain management.

We hope you will enjoy these award-winning manuscripts on supply chain management and industrial distribution topics. Once again, we would like to thank everyone who contributed to the success of the 5th Annual SCMID Symposium in Atlanta, Georgia.

Mert Tokman, Lauren S. BeitelspacherGuest Editors