A research agenda to reflect reality: On being responsive

Abstract

If you ignored the news, isolated yourself from the stock market, and were not a fan of musician Jack White, here is what else you may have missed in 2021: logistics and supply chain management matter to the point that the field is now under a microscope (McLain et al. 2021). While media pundits and politicians continue to incorrectly say “the” supply chain (Singman, 2021), it is refreshing that, for the first time ever, the public at large understands that getting products to retail shelves or to one's doorstep can actually be rather complicated.

At the time of this editorial, one of the most significant challenges for many companies around the globe is responding to pandemic pent-up demand and adjusting to the related supply chain constraints and bottlenecks (Pylas, 2021; Thorbecke, 2021). Globally, a shortage of hourly labor for essential supply chain roles has created a ripple effect that continues to interrupt business operations and exacerbate supply chain disruptions (Taylor, 2021). Likewise, companies are struggling to recruit and retain professional supply chain talent, especially as supply chain roles evolve to become more strategic—literally to those that help shape business strategy (Supply Chain Digital, 2020).

Looking back, the last two decades have seen major growth in the importance of logistics and supply chain management (L&SCM) as an invaluable career and as a major research discipline. Yet, most business schools have been unresponsive to market needs, with many displaying an unwillingness to be adaptable, flexible, agile, or improvisational enough to include L&SCM education within their degree offerings. More inexplicably, many business schools do not even have an L&SCM course in their core curriculum (Opatrny-Yazell & Nelson, 2021).

The reality is that operational efficiency will always be integral to L&SCM decisions, but when it consistently comes at the expense of developing L&SCM processes that adapt to market changes, the outcome can be disastrous. This is one of several reasons that as JBL editors, we emphasize research that underscores the strategic importance of L&SCM both within the firm and across the extended supply chain. We want to see the research reflected in JBL aligned with current business reality—because supply chain stuff is really tricky, even for Elon Musk.

After experiencing the recent global supply chain disruption—the largest since WW2—L&SCM strategy seems to be evolving. The lean manufacturing and inventory strategy once coveted by most companies is losing favor. For instance, the pioneer of the lean strategy, Toyota, has paused its Just-in-Time (JIT) approach (Trivedi, 2021). Disruptions in recent years have exposed vulnerabilities of sole sourcing strategies, while globally accessible e-commerce allows consumers to demand low prices, even as it complicates last mile delivery (Shih, 2020). The reality: many supply chains that were designed for efficiency are unable to be sufficiently responsive.

We are seeing this shift reflected in JBL submissions as well. The JBL articles published in 2021 reflect an evolving direction for L&SCM—one that focuses on strategic investments in technology (Dong & Franklin, 2021; Durach et al. 2021; Kurpjuweit et al. 2021; Sternberg et al. 2021), the significance of managing a complex and changing global landscape (Choi et al. 2021; Novak et al. 2021; Wiedmer & Griffis, 2021; Wieland & Durach, 2021) and a shifting role of expectations and skill sets for L&SCM managers (Ellram & Tate, 2021; Falcone et al. 2021). The current issue also reflects research that emphasizes the strategic nature of L&SCM and the value creation that comes as a result, as we highlight below.

In the first issue of 2022, we ask this question to the body of L&SCM scholars: What is next for our discipline? We believe that recent events and the painful adjustment period provide a ripe opportunity to build unique discipline-based theory to illuminate the scope, dimensions, and dynamics of L&SCM philosophy. That is, we should expand the research within our disciple to further highlight the what, why, when, and how of L&SCM. Even more purposely, an important goal should be to leverage our research as a means to reflect the current business landscape and underscore the need for more business school investment in L&SCM programs.

The authors argue for a specific and defined foundational perspective within the L&SCM literature. This is an important step on the path to becoming a mature business discipline, and to answer those fundamental questions of why the field exists and why the scholarship is relevant to business. The authors contend that responsiveness provides organizations and supply chains direction—and the associated outcomes—to motivate convergence of objectives within the firm and across an entire L&SCM network. It is also relevant as managers wrestle with complicated external conditions, including how they exert influence on firm decision making and decisions by other actors in the supply chain. Thus, a responsiveness view of L&SCM could provide researchers a foundation to develop and test relationships between activities and outcomes that more accurately capture L&SCM phenomena and associated relationships. It may also provide outcomes that L&SCM managers focus on, and importantly, are within their control. This article provides a starting point for debating the usefulness of a responsiveness-based view, and it offers five dimensions responsiveness: adaptability, flexibility, agility, improvisation, and resilience. After several decades of attention to supply chain efficiency, it seems appropriate to build theory through a new lens that reflects the transformative potential of the supply chain.

We took the liberty of discussing the Richey et al. (2022) paper first not only because of familiarity, but also because the other papers in this issue reflect phenomena that are connected to L&SCM responsiveness. The research provides solid contributions related to firm and supply chain responses to product recalls, delivery demands, repurposing for opportunities, external threats, and transparency expectations.

In, “Food for thought: Recalls and outcomes,” Wowak et al. (2022) address the significance of firm responses to product recall situations in food supply chains. They highlight both severe financial consequences of these recalls, and they also note that the field has not uncovered why some companies have recall processes in place that allow them to respond quickly, while other recalls can be more time-consuming and costly. To investigate this discrepancy, they investigate both the recall process and stakeholder communication. Outcomes uncover financial, brand, and consumer impacts.

Specifically, this study finds that managers respond to recalls by scaling, deferring, abandoning, or layering (dividing the recall into segments) the recall. The authors also find that companies that have the most responsive recall process—one that minimizes harmful outcomes—when they can quickly and accurately diagnose a potential recall. Effective recall communication also enables the proficient extraction of a product. In contrast, the recall process can become difficult when supply chain complexity impacts diagnosis and coordination, and these conditions make the layering process more important for responding to the problem.

The second manuscript “Hybrid last mile delivery fleets with crowdsourcing: A systems view of managing the cost-service trade-off,” by Castillo et al. (2022), highlights responsiveness to competitive and consumer pressure for expedited last-mile delivery to consumers. To be responsive to consumer demands and to control costs, some companies are experimenting with hybrid delivery systems that utilize both private fleets and crowdsourcing (outsourcing deliveries to gig economy workers). The authors point out crowdsourcing introduces a new wrinkle in customer service levels, logistics performance, and route optimization—driver autonomy.

The study employs an agent-based simulation that utilizes home delivery data from a retail pharmacy in the United States to examine how supply chains respond to changes in last mile delivery. Expectedly, the authors find that the most significant incentive for crowdsourced drivers is compensation, but rather unexpectedly, they find that there is not a linear relationship between compensation and unit delivery cost. That is, when drivers’ compensation is too low, the delivery acceptance rates are lower, which means that the company has to use its private fleet for expedited delivery, which increases unit delivery costs. Likewise, they find that high compensation rates do not significantly improve same-day fulfillment times.

In “Supply chain plasticity during a global disruption: Effects of CEO and supply chain networks on operational repurposing,” Falcone et al. (2022) underscore how companies can respond to societal needs during a disruption by adapting their existing production operations (e.g., apparel producers providing face masks during the COVID-19 pandemic). This closely aligns to the adaptation dimension of responsiveness in the Richey et al. (2022) paper. The authors refer to this as “operational repurposing,” and they note that it can create a great deal of uncertainty for companies. The authors argue that key to operational repurposing is supply chain plasticity, of the ability to rapidly make major adaptations to the supply chain to accommodate massive shifts in the overall business environment.

The study highlights the significance of interorganizational network characteristics in operational repurposing. Specifically, the authors use social network analysis to examine how prominent and entrepreneurial positions in both the firm's supply chain network and the CEO’s network influence the likelihood of the firm engaging in operational repurposing. Results indicate that a firm's entrepreneurial position in both its supply chain and CEO networks positively influence the likelihood of implementing operational repurposing, while but prominent positions have negative relationships. They also find that the CEO’s network plays a particularly important role in operational repurposing when the firm hold an entrepreneurial supply chain network position.

In “Supply disruptions and protection motivation: Why some managers act proactively (and others don't),” Bode et al. (2022) take a micro-foundational view of responsiveness by examining managers’ proactive and reactive responses to threats of a supply chain disruption. Drawing upon protection motivation theory and using a discrete choice experiment, the authors examine factors that influence a manager's decision to take proactive measures to prepare for a supply chain disruption. They find that managers are most influenced by the cost of the response. That is, even when managers perceive that proactive measures to mitigate the threat of a disruption are effective, they are more likely to be influenced by the implementation and relationship cost of those measures. The research also finds inconsistency in what factors managers say is most important and what they actually do based on those factors. This is a fascinating study of human behavior, and it highlights the cost-focused orientation of most L&SCM managers.

Finally, in “Utilizing blockchain technology for supply chain transparency: A resource orchestration perspective”, Gligor et al. (2022) utilize a case study to understand how resources can be orchestrated to develop supply chain transparency (SCT)—the disclosure of sustainable practices and/or production processes to the stakeholders. The authors offer a theoretical framework for understanding the structuring, bundling and leveraging processes, and they contextualize the managerial action required to accumulate, combine, and exploit resources. Drawing from Richey et al. (2022), this research highlights the flexibility dimension of responsiveness because the case company, a small coffee producer, changed its current policy to adopt blockchain technology (BCT) for enhanced SCT. The traceability capability offered by BCT allowed the company to verify the raw materials from their origin and to document real-time flow of those materials throughout the supply chain. This change allowed the company to enhance its value to consumers and meet their demands for authenticity.

In sum, the articles in this issue reflect the kind of research that we want to continue to publish in 2022 and throughout the rest of our tenure as editors. We will continue to highlight the importance of the L&SCM discipline, and we hope that the current visibility and changes occurring in the field will advance further theoretical development as it relates exclusively to defining the discipline as unique to others. We will also be vocal advocates for growth of the discipline through continued advancement of L&SCM curriculum, programs within business schools at every education level, and other non-degree opportunities that will open the door for more scholars to embrace this field and pursue relevant and rigorous scholarship that makes a meaningful difference to business and society.