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The purpose of this paper is to extend the concept of myopia and introduce the concept of labor market myopia (LMM), as well as the role that human resources management (HRM) plays in its prevention and resolution. LMM, a more specific form of factor market myopia (FMM), is a myopic view of labor needs. LMM is only going to increase as human capital becomes increasingly scarce due to labor shortages.

This conceptual review focuses on research on factor market rivalry (FMR) in the supply chain. Using three sample job categories, the concept of myopia is applied toward the human resources context to propose a new term describing a failure to consider future labor needs.

The authors position HRM/talent management as critical in preventing and addressing LMM at both firm and industry levels and the critical role of labor markets in FMR. HR strategies are suggested to prevent LMM include: expansion of the available workforce; increasing current workforce productivity, economic remedies like paying higher wages and proactively assessing and forecasting the current and future human resource capacity and needs.

Labor needs to be considered as a factor in the same realm of importance as other resources. The HR strategies discussed are key to preventing LMM and improving organizational performance and effectiveness.

The authors argue that organizations not only compete for resources downstream (i.e. customers and markets) but also upstream, such as with human resources. The authors introduced a new concept/term to frame the effect on organizations when supply chain planning and HR strategy do not take labor into consideration. This was accomplished by first narrowing the concept of marketing myopia to FMM, and in this conceptual paper, it was subsequently narrowed to introduce the term LMM.

The purpose of this paper is to gather the current definitions of supply chain management in practical and analytical usage, to develop standards for assessing definitions and to apply these standards to the most readily available definitions of the term.

In this research, the authors gathered the current definitions of supply chain management in practical and analytical usage from journals, textbooks, universities, and industry associations and online.

The research ends with proposed definitions for consideration. Discussion and areas for future research are included.

Involved organizations, supply chain management programs in higher education, and professional and certifying organizations in the field need to meet and work together to research consensus on the final definition of the field, realizing that definitions can evolve, but also recognizing that a starting point is needed in this rapidly growing area.

The authors argue, quite simply, that a consensus definition of supply chain management is unlikely as long as we continue offering and accepting definitions that are technically unsound. Many of the current definitions violate several principles of good definitions. For these reasons, they are either empty, too restrictive, or too expansive. Until we come across or develop a definition that overcomes these limitations and agree on it, then we will still search for “the” definition without finding it. The field will become more crowded with definitions, but less certain, and progress will be restricted.

Theoreticians, researchers, and practitioners in a discipline require key terms in a field to share a nominal definition and prefer to have a shared real or essential definition. Yet in supply chain management, we find no such shared definition, real or nominal. Even the Council of Supply Chain Management Professional offers its definition with the caveat: “The supply chain management (SCM) profession has continued to change and evolve to fit the needs of the growing global supply chain. With the supply chain covering a broad range of disciplines, the definition of what is a supply chain can be unclear” (CSCMP, 2016).

The purpose of this paper is to apply the goals and processes of reverse logistics related to disposal and renewal to an industry example, in this case, the tufted carpet manufacturing industry. With an industry-wide coalition, the Carpet America Recovery Effort (CARE), the carpet industry offers lessons for other industries on how to create new products from waste, how to develop systems to process this waste, how to encourage the development of infrastructure for reprocessing and how to remove barriers to recovery. A major part of the US floor covering cluster is headquartered around Dalton, Georgia. The industry has formed a coalition to divert manufactured carpet from landfills and find other uses for used carpet. This industry-wide coalition, known as the Carpet America Recovery Effort, offers many lessons for other industries on creating new products from waste, developing systems to process this waste, encouraging the development of infrastructure for reprocessing and removing barriers to recovery.

Academics have proposed several frameworks for examining reverse logistics. In this study, the framework developed by de Brito and Dekker (2004) is utilized because it focuses on essential forces in reverse logistics, asking four simple questions: Why? What? How? and Who? To this list, is added a question: Where? This modified framework is applied to the carpet manufacturing industry, focusing on post-consumer carpet.

The carpet industry is becoming a model for developing renewal supply chains that take waste products and create new ones. Although disposal remains the largest part of the end-of-use supply chain for carpet, this is changing, though not rapidly enough to suit the industry.

This case focuses on what the industry is currently doing and on the impediments it has encountered in developing these chains. Renewal chains may well dominate the future of reverse logistics in the industry, but much work remains. The paper concludes with a discussion and areas for future research.

The purpose of this study is use a bibliometric analysis to explore the relational nature of knowledge creation in WFM in operations. Companies live under constant pressure to find the best ways to plan their workforce, and the workforce emangement (WFM) is one of the biggest challenges faced by managers. Relevant research on WFM in operations has been published in a several range of journals that vary in their scope and readership, and thus the academic contribution to the topic remains largely fragmented.

To address this gap, this review aims to map research on WFM in operations to understand where it comes from and where it is going and, therefore, provides opportunities for future work. This study combined two bibliometric approaches with manual document coding to examine the literature corpus of WFM in operations to draw a holistic picture of its different aspects.

Content and thematic analysis of the seminal studies resulted in the extraction of three key research themes: workforce cross-training, planning workforce mixed methods and individual workforce characteristics. The findings of this study further highlight the gaps in the WFM in operations literature and raise some research questions that warrant further academic investigation in the future.

Likewise, this study has important implications for practitioners who are likely to benefit from a holistic understanding of the different aspects of WFM in operations.

Owner operators are an important group of truck drivers, yet have been the subject of very little academic research. Specifically, no research has explored retention issues among owner operators. Thus, this paper aims to employ a segmentation approach to owner operator retention, examining important independent variables that include: pay and compensation, top management support, time at home, and safety.

Data were collected from a large truckload (TL) carrier. The drivers surveyed were irregular route long‐haul drivers. A total of 239 responses were obtained, for a response rate of 74.6 per cent. Latent class regression (LCR), a technique new to logistics and supply chain management (SCM) research, was utilized for data analysis.

The results show there are four different need‐based driver segments, which means that specific driver retention programs must be developed for each segment.

The major limitation of this paper is that an attitudinal measure (intent to stay) was used to assess turnover instead of actual behavior. Additionally, only one demographic variable was collected. Implications of this paper include demonstrating the existence of unique segments within the same sample; the specification of the major attitudinal drivers for each segment; and the need to further study a largely neglected but very important group in the supply chain.

From a practitioner viewpoint, knowing that different groups of owner operators exist will help in developing programs to improve driver retention. Specific recommended actions for each segment are presented. These results will help managers with the retention of owner operators.

Owner operators are an important group when it comes to making the global supply chain function smoothly and efficiently. Yet, little research in logistics and SCM address this group. Driver turnover continues to plague the TL industry and understanding owner operators, and their segments, is critical to improve driver retention, cost structure, and profitability. Also, to determine if segments of this under‐researched group exist, LCR was deployed.

The purpose of this paper is to focus on adoption of certified management standards, specifically public standards. Such standards play an increasingly important role in today’s business environment. However, to generate adoption benefits, they must be first widely accepted – a situation where they have become viewed as the de facto norms. For this state to occur early adopters play a critical role. Past research has argued that early adopters, in exchange for assuming more risk, are rewarded with higher economic returns. Yet, these findings are based on private, not public standards. With public standards, early adopters do not receive such benefits. There is evidence that public standards are becoming more important. This situation leads to a simple but important question addressed in this study – if early adopters assume the risks of embracing a new public standard without economic benefits, then what is their motivation? To resolve this question, this study draws on agency theory and prospect theory. The authors argue that early adopters embrace such standards because of their desire to minimize risk resulting from failure to support the goal at the heart of the public standards.

Data were obtained from the Customs-Trade Partnership Against Terrorism (C-TPAT) Partners Cost Benefit Survey and analyzed through structural equation modeling.

Early adopters of public standards are not driven by economic benefits but rather by the need to minimize their exposure to the risks associated with failing to satisfy the goals associated with a public standard. In other words, they were motivated by the need to minimize costs. In the case of C-TPAT, these costs are those of failing to provide or improve network security.

This study has shed new light on the standards adoption process by clarifying the specific motivations that drive early adoption of a public standard. In addition to identifying the loss aversion motives of early adopters and economic benefit motives of later adopters, the authors have also elaborated on the notion that standards have differing levels of precedence, particularly when comparing private with public standards.

In a world characterized by increasing demands for outcomes such as improved security and where governmental funding is falling, due to growing deficits and governments that are becoming more conservative, the authors expect the use of public standards to increase.

Different from prior research on private standard, the paper focuses on the organizations involved in the adoption and diffusion of a public standard, with special attention being devoted to the early adopters. The paper provides a theoretical explanation for the actions of early adopters of a public standard through the theoretical lens of prospect theory.