Journal of Business Logistics最新文献

Humanitarian logistics (HL) is a relatively new research area that requires clear boundaries and a defined foundational perspective. Recent disasters have shown that the scope of HL is expanding, as in cases of cash-based interventions, outsourcing to commercial companies, and stronger involvement of local communities. These changes imply the importance of scrutinizing the old definitions of HL and determining whether they require adaptation. This step is important considering that inadequate definitions create (i) misconceptions about what HL is, (ii) a lack of unity and understanding of the field's research goals, (iii) confusion about what constitutes a contribution, and (iv) theoretical ambiguity, which masks promising research directions, fragments knowledge, and retards the progress of scientific research. Based on a structured review, we found that three definitions from around 2005 have predominated in the literature so far. We identified various issues with these definitions and then conducted an expert elicitation process to develop and validate an updated foundational perspective on HL. Finally, we analyzed the data collected from experts using the literature on what constitutes a “good definition.” This led us to propose a revised definition and accompanying properties for HL. We conclude the article by offering important avenues for future research.

Managing relationships with new venture suppliers require the adaptation of supplier management practices and routines. This research builds upon the dynamic capabilities perspective to explicate the ability to partner effectively with new venture suppliers as a dynamic capability. We argue that new venture partnering capability (NVPC) encompasses sensing, seizing, and transforming capabilities. Firms with sensing capabilities can interpret new ventures' value propositions and then match them to the needs of their business units. Seizing capabilities allow firms to coordinate and develop the relationship with a new venture supplier to capture value. Transforming capabilities enable firms to adapt resources and reconfigure their sensing and seizing capabilities. Our findings suggest that firms accelerate the transformation and strengthen dynamic NVPCs by applying entrepreneurial behavior through high-quality and regular interactions with new venture suppliers and embedding a dedicated new venture function. We also find that dynamic NVPCs can reside at different levels and that entrepreneurial managers can stimulate the development of organizational NVPCs. In general, we provide further empirical evidence on how buying firms can more effectively leverage the potential of new venture suppliers.

Food insecurity directly impacts individual well-being, and logistics is considered the backbone of serving food-insecure individuals. Food insecurity organizations (FIOs) such as national organizations, food banks, and food pantries offer transformative logistics services to address food insecurity. Previous research has begun to explore FIOs' logistics services and operations, but sparse research has examined how FIOs evaluate logistics service performance. Using logistics service quality as a foundation, our study explores the meaning of logistics service performance from the perspective of FIOs. Applying the hermeneutic method, we conducted interviews with 23 informants across 14 organizations to understand the meaning of logistics performance for FIOs. We leverage these interviews to offer a contextualized understanding of logistics service quality based on the four pillars of food insecurity and the shared meaning of logistics service performance within FIOs. By subjecting an important “traditional” performance metric to the consumer-centric realities of the food insecurity supply chain, we extend logistics theory by offering transformative logistics service outcomes based on well-being perspectives. We also offer timely guidance to help facilitate the vital work of FIOs.

New product supply chain planning is challenging, primarily due to the lack of historical demand data. Rarely, however, do the academic literature or companies differentiate the demand forecasting process for new products from existing ones, despite their increased reliance on judgmental estimates. This research focuses on how judgmental errors lead to an under-estimation of the difference between the highest- and lowest-demand stock-keeping units (SKUs), and consequently negatively impact supply chain planning for new product family introductions. A generalized empirical model and accompanying discrete event simulation are developed and applied to data from a major consumer packaged goods (CPG) firm during the launch of a new cosmetics product family. This application allows us to identify a focal type of judgmental error (identified as the SKU-level spread bias) inherent to new product forecasting and to provide a new theoretical understanding of how this type of bias harms supply chain performance. Via an empirically driven theory-building approach that iterates between the simulation outcomes and existing literature, SKU-level spread bias is demonstrated to harm demand forecasts and, thereby, supply chain plans. Our unique theory-building approach advances theory by identifying planner SKU-level spread bias as a new source of bias that firms should seek to mitigate when introducing new product families.

Entrepreneurship and supply chain management (SCM), respectively, have enjoyed meteoric rises in business practice and scholarly attention over the past three decades. Further, each of the two disciplines has much to offer the other. Yet, we have not witnessed sustained, meaningful integration of principles, practices, and influences despite powerful potential. This paper explores this potential by featuring prospects for entrepreneurship to influence SCM, and vice versa, bringing an entrepreneurial mindset to SCM and supply chain orientation (SCO) to entrepreneurial activities. In particular, we illustrate a validated assessment and diagnostic tool, the Corporate Entrepreneurship Assessment Instrument (CEAI), adapted for supply chain managers with the intent of instilling corporate entrepreneurial activity among supply chain professionals. Granted, supply chain managers are typically tasked with meeting expectations toward customer service effectiveness, efficiency, asset utilization, and safety. Yet, we believe that forming an organizational environment conducive to entrepreneurial thinking could be extremely valuable in the supply chain realm, enhancing capabilities like agility, plasticity, and responsiveness such that innovation and business growth are achieved alongside traditional SCM expectations. Further, we feature several avenues for future research at the interface of entrepreneurship and SCM.

In this editorial for our special topic forum (STF) on Global Supply Chain Research, we present a novel approach that empowers firms to evaluate their supply chain complexity's current state and potentially reveal hidden patterns of complexity. Our focus lies in developing a configurational understanding of global supply chain complexity, leveraging the diverse perspectives, and insights provided by the existing literature on this subject. Furthermore, we shed light on exciting opportunities for future research and introduce the accepted research papers featured in this STF.

Offering highly customized products and services is an attractive strategic option for firms in business-to-business (B2B) markets. However, as effective customization for downstream customers requires significant reliance on upstream suppliers, capabilities of upstream suppliers become central to firm strategies to produce customized offerings. Despite the importance of upstream supplier capabilities for downstream customization, there is a scarcity of research on how firms build their suppliers' capabilities for effective customization. Building on the foundations of research streams on customization, capabilities, and collaboration, this research tests a model which illustrates that (i) upstream supplier capabilities can result in positive customization outcomes for downstream markets and (ii) a firm's collaboration capital can build upstream supplier capabilities directly and also indirectly through supplier communication. Analyses of data collected from 189 organizations that extensively engage in downstream customization reveal the role of collaboration capital—conceptualized as a higher order factor with collaboration orientation, collaborative flexibility, and collaborative communication as first-order dimensions—in building upstream supplier capabilities for downstream customization. We conclude with a delineation of the contributions, theoretical and practical implications, and limitations of this research.

Supply chain adaptability is the least explored of the three revered Triple-A qualities (agility and alignment being the other two) and in the greatest need of a deeper understanding in the unpredictably evolving contemporary business environment. This study critically reviews the literature and makes three contributions. First, it outlines the different ways supply chain adaptability has been understood and describes the epistemological basis of this knowledge. Second, it synthesizes the findings into a theoretical model linking supply chain adaptability to its antecedents and outcomes. Third, despite its origins in a practitioner-focused journal, supply chain adaptability has largely been explored like a black box, with few insights into its workings or actionable recommendations for its creation. To this end, the study outlines an agenda for future research to deepen our understanding along the extant lines of inquiry and to broaden our investigation to cover new empirical foci to open the black box of supply chain adaptability.

The growing popularity of “Supply Chain Transparency” (SCT) as an idea has motivated its use as a “buzzword,” leading to a lack of terminological clarity. Terms like visibility, transparency, and traceability are used colloquially or as synonyms for one another, yet often without a proper conceptual basis. We argue that the absence of a clear understanding of SCT limits the ability of scholars and practitioners to fully understand the role played by transparency in supply chains and to study its antecedents, technologies, types, and outcomes. Therefore, transparency research is at the point where a scoping review of literature on SCT is particularly useful. Our review first provides a formal conceptualization of SCT, allowing us to identify how transparency has been understood, the building blocks of SCT, and what distinguishes SCT from other concepts. In the review, we initially identify relevant concepts underlying SCT with a view to establish a unifying and nuanced framework for SCT. Second, using that unified conceptualization as a basis, primary outcomes such as the benefits and risks of SCT are determined. Third, we systematically detect and classify future research opportunities arising from the building blocks of SCT.