Supply Chain Risk | Business Continuity | Transport Vulnerability » Halldorsson Arni

What kind of Supplychainist are you?

Jan Husdal — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 05:45:01 +0000

With an ever-increasing number of companies outsourcing all non-core activities and manufacturing their products in faraway countries, Supply Chain Management (SCM) has evolved into both a professional and an academic field that is growing, spreading and developing offshoots in all directions. But what is SCM really, is it just a new name for logistics or is it possible to distinguish certain perspectives? In Logistics versus Supply Chain Management: An International Survey, Paul D. Larson & Arni Halldorsson (2004) set out to investigate how the experts themselves classify their own realms.

The Four Seasons of Supply Chain Management

Well, they are not exactly four “seasons”, I just thought it would be a catchy term to use. Anyways, what the article by Larson and Halldorsson describes, is the relationship or linkage between SCM and logistics, and depending on ones point of view, four different strands are discernible: the Tradionalist, the Unionist, the Re-Labelist, and the Intersectionist.

Actually, there may be five, as I will return to below.

Traditionalist
- SCM is a part of logistics, along the lines of external or inter-organizational logistics
Re-Labelist
- SCM is logistics, but renamed, a form of “integrated” logistics
Unionist
- Logistics is a part of SCM, reducing logistics to one of many business processes or areas
Intersectionist
- SCM is a broad strategy that cuts across many if not all business areas, where logistics becomes operational decisions, SCM becomes strategic decision, and tactical decisions fall to the intersection.

Does Supply Chain Management exist?

Five years have passed since this article, and has the world changed? Is there now a consensus on the lineage between logistics and SCM? Already more than ten years ago, in 1997, LaLonde asked the same question in ‘Supply Chain Management: Myth or reality?’ and most recently, a similar question was asked in a PhD dissertation from Sweden: Supply Chain Management – does it exist? by Erik Sandberg from the University of Linköping. What Sandberg found out was that management appears to be good in management, but lack the necessary focus on supply chain activities, while logistics handles operations as best they can, but are in dire need of strategic directions from the management level, which in the end could give the company ‘a sustainable competitive advantage vis-à-vis its competitors’ . So basically, the two, management and logistics, are living side-by-side, more or less unaware of that they need to intersect. Is that the fifth variant, the ‘Desectionist‘? I thought of calling it ‘Separatist’, but I don’t think that would be politically correct.

Personally I would call myself an intersectionist. What kind of SupplyChainist are you?

Reference

Halldorsson, A., & Larson, P. (2004). Logistics versus supply chain management: an international survey International Journal of Logistics, 7 (1), 17-31 DOI: 10.1080/13675560310001619240

Author links

soton.ac.uk: Arni Halldorsson
umanitoba.ca: Paul D Larson

husdal.com: Supply Chain Management – does it really exist?
husdal.com: Economies of integration
interorganisational.org: SCM Theory and Practice – what comes first?

Conferences in Transportation and Supply Chain

Jan Husdal — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 23:01:16 +0000

Looking for a list of conferences in supply chain and transportation-related topics? By accident, I came across this list on a website called interorganisational.org. Not only does it feature calls for papers for conferences, but also calls for papers for academic journals, complete with abstract or paper submission deadline. This makes it easy to select which one is next in line. The list is continuously updated, and although the website owner claims that they only “occasionally” upload call-for-papers, course announcements, open positions, etc., as far as I can see, the list is very complete.

interorganisational.org

The website itself, interorganisational.org, is also worthwhile spending some time at. It is run by Arni Halldorsson, a Senior Lecturer at the University of Southampton, and Gyöngyi Kovács, an Assistant Professor in Supply Chain Management and Corporate Geography at the HANKEN School of Economics in Helsinki, Finland. While Halldorsson’s specializes in managerial problems that relate to inter-organisational relationships, Kovács’s has a penchant for corporate environmental and social responsibility in supply chains, industrial ecology, and humanitarian logistics.

On a final note, I should mention that snce January 2008, Gyöngyi has served as a regional editor of the International Journal of Physical Distribution and Logistics Management. Halldorsson has also contributed to the book Northern Lights in Logistics & Supply Chain Management that was published earlier this year.

interorganisational.org – The Wall (a list of conferences and other announcements)

The Nordic approach to Logistics and Supply Chain Management?

Jan Husdal — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 12:18:25 +0000

Is there such a thing as a typically Nordic way of thinking within the field of Supply Chain Management? A new book is out, trying to answer that question: Northern Lights in Logistics & Supply Chain Management by Jan Stentoft Arlbjørn, Árni Halldórsson, Marianne Jahre, Karen Spens (eds.). I came across this book while doing some Google searches on supply chain risk, ending up on www.interorgainisational.org, a site run by two university professors, Gyöngyi Kovács and Arni Halldorsson, and dedicated to showing a different side of logistics than the pure business and money focus it usually has. Halldorson is also a contributor to the book.

Publisher’s review

I haven’t actually read the book yet, but I certainly look forward to getting my hands on it, since it looks very promising, based on the reviews on the publisher website:

This book encourages European researchers to dare diverge from mainstream ‘American way’, and to explore new avenues in line with hot topics and key questions within European business. (Paul D. Larson, Professor, University of Manitoba, Asper School of Business, Canada)
The authors of this book make a synthesis of the research conducted in the Nordic countries compared with conventional mainstream research. As a result a Nordic approach to logistics research has crystallized, and that is what this book is about.
(Nathalie Fabbe-Costes, Professor, Université de la Méditerranée-Aix-Marseille II, France)
The chapters provide an understanding and, perhaps more importantly, consciousness for scholars that are part of this research environment: Where are we now, what have we been influenced by, and in what area are we able to provide positive impact?
(Daniel Knudsen, Senior Project Manager, Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications AB, Sweden)

Based on my own experience, yes, there may in fact be a Nordic approach to Supply Chain Management, an approach that is less concerned with cost-effectiveness and hardcore business thinking, but more leaning towards the societal impact of sound and sustainable supply chain management.

Read online

Buy this book

husdal.com: NOFOMA
husdal.com: The latest trends in logistics and supply chain management research