IPSERA News

IPSERA Purchasing & Innovation SIG Workshop (online): Technology and Economic Decoupling: Implication for Supply Chains

Mohammad H. Eslami — Fri, 17 Jan 2025 09:12:32 GMT

Dear IPSERA Community,

We would like to invite you to the IPSERA online workshop, which will explore Technological and Economic decoupling between the East and the West. This phenomenon, increasingly discussed by economists and geopolitical analysts, has implications for global trade, procurement, and supply chain management. As academics, we must consider the decoupling in our research agendas to understand its far-reaching consequences.

Date: Thursday 13th February 2025 | 11:00 EST | 16:00 GMT I 17:00 CET

To provide an overview and set the stage for our discussions, we invited Caroline Freund to give a keynote; Caroline Freund is the Dean of the UC San Diego School of Global Policy and Strategy and an expert in international trade and economic development.

In addition, we have three distinguished speakers, each presenting concise 5-minute input on critical aspects currently impacting companies:

Michael Henke discusses the strategic actions companies take in response to decoupling.
Hervé Legenvre on the role and patterns of adoption of open technology in navigating the decoupling.
Carmela di Mauro on the trends and challenges associated with reshoring.

The workshop is organized by Hervé Legenvre (EIPM - The European Institute of Purchasing Management HQ) and Michael Henke (TU Dortmund). The event will be moderated by Iryna Malacina (Business School of LUT University), who will also lead the final roundtable discussion.

Registration is available at the following link here.

Your IPSERA Executive Committee

IPSERA 2025 Extended Submission Deadline: December 9, 2024

Mohammad H. Eslami — Thu, 28 Nov 2024 15:54:06 GMT

IPSERA 2025 Extended Submission Deadline: December 9, 2024

We would like to inform you that the deadline for paper submissions and educator workshop proposals has been extended to December 9, 2024. We warmly invite you to submit your best work to the IPSERA conference 2025 via the following link.

For more information about the Call for Papers, Key Dates, Preliminary Conference Program, and Submission, please visit our official conference website.

We are looking forward to welcoming you to the IPSERA Conference 2025 in Rotterdam.

On behalf of Erik van Raaij (Conference Chair) and Anna Nikulina

(Conference Co-Chair)

IPSERA Conference 2025 Submission Deadline Reminder

Mohammad H. Eslami — Fri, 22 Nov 2024 11:07:45 GMT

This is a kind reminder that the submission deadline for the IPSERA Conference 2025 is fast approaching. All types of submissions are due by December 1, 2024, except for PDW submissions, which are due by December 20, 2024. We warmly invite you to submit your best work to the conference via this link.

This year, the IPSERA Conference 2025 will be hosted at Erasmus University, Campus Woudestein, Burgemeester Oudlaan 50, Rotterdam, from March 30 to April 2, 2025. The theme for IPSERA 2025 is Room for Talent. For more information about the Call for Papers, Key Dates, Preliminary Conference Program, and Submission, please visit our official conference website.

Please note that on the final day of the conference (Wednesday, 2 April 2025), we have a surprise activity in the morning (more about that later), an exciting academic program in the morning, and an award ceremony as part of the closing session of the conference at lunchtime. In addition, we will be offering interesting social activities for the afternoon that are related to Rotterdam, its port, and its surroundings. The social activities are optional and come at an additional fees. So, please plan your travel accordingly such that you can attend all parts of the conference.

We are looking forward to welcoming you to the IPSERA Conference 2025 in Rotterdam.

On behalf ofErik van Raaij(Conference Chair) andAnna Nikulina(Conference Co-Chair)

IPSERA Purchasing & Innovation SIG Workshop: Exploring New Ways of Innovating within Ecosystems

Mohammad H. Eslami — Tue, 19 Nov 2024 06:40:36 GMT

We would like to invite you to the IPSERA Purchasing & Innovation SIG Workshop: Exploring New Ways of Innovating within Ecosystems, taking place offline on 22-23 January 2025, which aims to help participants gain insights into new ways of innovating in ecosystems.

Participants will visitVodafone Procurement Company(VPC) andTomorrow Street: the startup accelerator hosted by VPC, and its Design-to-Cost lab.

Registration is available at the following link:https://lnkd.in/gct5KkaY

The workshop spans two days: participants will meet on the afternoon of 22nd January to visit VPC in Luxembourg. A dinner will be organized for the evening in the center of Luxembourg. On day two (23rd January) participants will meet at the University of Luxembourg for working paper presentations, followed by joint discussions and reflections from the session. Please register early as places are limited to 16 participants.

The workshop is coordinated byHervé Legenvre,Thomas E. Johnsen,Ala Arvidsson, and Lisa Govik in collaboration with the Luxembourg Centre for Logistics and Supply Chain Management University of Luxembourg.

Highlights: The IPSERA Brazil Forum

Mohammad H. Eslami — Mon, 11 Nov 2024 20:03:07 GMT

The IPSERA Brazil Forum recently took place atSchool of Economics, Business and Accounting at the University of São Paulo, with the aim of reviewing potential abstracts for submission to IPSERA 2025 in Rotterdam.

The event opened with remarks fromIryna Malacina, and over the course of a day, twelve papers were presented and received constructive feedback from both peers and experts, including Gustavo Menoncin Pereira,Nuno Fouto,Holger SchieleandFabio Cerquinho, PhD.

A notable highlight came by one of the organizers,Gustavo Menoncin Pereira

on the event’s impact: “IPSERA support empowers Brazilian masters and PhD candidates to move forward with their research in PSM topics. IPSERA generates more interest in others who were not aware of conducting research in PSM in Brazil. When participating in an event like this, a 'new world' opens to them – they feel part of an international, multi-institutional community of active PSM researchers, practitioners, and educators. Everyone was proud to have a Regional IPSERA Centre of Competence in Brazil.”

Interdisciplinary Public Procurement PhD Forum 2025

Mohammad H. Eslami — Fri, 08 Nov 2024 13:00:13 GMT

On 4 April 2025, theUtrecht UniversityCentre for Public Procurement (UUCePP) will host its bi-annual Interdisciplinary Public Procurement PhD Forum in collaboration with the IOS Platform ‘The Transactional State.’ This event is supported externally by IPSERA.

PhD researchers in public procurement are encouraged to submit abstracts by 17 January 2025 (see details below).

For more information on submission and registration, please visit here.

Save Date | IPSERA Education SIG Workshop: Artificial Intelligence Opportunities in PSM Education

Mohammad H. Eslami — Mon, 04 Nov 2024 15:26:51 GMT

Date: Thursday 5th December 2024 | 14.00-15:00 CET

We would like to invite you to the IPSERA online workshop which is aimed at purchasing and supply management (PSM) educators who are interested in exploring and discussing how AI can add value (or not) to Purchasing and Supply Management Education. At the end of this workshop, participants will have a better understanding of how they can make use of AI within their educator’s work.

A group of expertsCharles Knight, Assistant Director at Advance HE andChaaben Kouki, Professor of Supply Chain Management and Director of the Data Lab at ESSCA School of Management will share their experiences and approaches to developing innovative AI algorithms, products and services in Higher Education.

The workshop will be held online via MS Teams and will feature collaborative discussions within the IPSERA Education community, organized bySteve Kelly,Katia Picaud BelloandKlaas Stek. Do not miss this exciting and valuable opportunity to join IPSERA's first initiative focusing on AI opportunities in PSM Education.

Registration is available at the following link here.

IPSERA 2025 Rotterdam Conference - Registration is OPEN

Mohammad H. Eslami — Fri, 01 Nov 2024 18:52:27 GMT

We are pleased to inform you that the registration portal for the IPSERA Conference 2025 is now open. Additionally, we would like to remind you that the regular submission deadline for all types of work is December 1, 2024, and we invite you to submit your best work to the conference. Register now via the link: https://ipsera.com/sys/website/system-pages/?pageId=1737657

This year, the IPSERA Conference 2025 will take place at the Erasmus University, Campus Woudestein, Burgemeester Oudlaan 50, Rotterdam from March 30 to April 2, 2025! The theme of IPSERA 2025 is Room for Talent.

Please visit our official conference website to see the Call for Papers, Key Dates, Conference Preliminary Program, and Submission Guidelines: https://ipsera.com/ipsera2025

We are looking forward to welcoming you to the IPSERA Conference 2025 in Rotterdam.

On behalf of Erik van Raaij (Conference Chair) and Anna Nikulina (Conference Co-Chair)

IPSERA 2025 Rotterdam Conference - Express Submission Reminder

Mohammad H. Eslami — Mon, 14 Oct 2024 12:05:38 GMT

We would like to remind you that the deadline for the IPSERA Conference 2025 express submission of working paper (WP) and full doctoral research proposal is fast approaching on October 27. Kindly note that express submission offers an early opportunity for those in need of visa and/or anticipation in travelling plans.

Save the Date I Paper Development Workshop on “Envisioning Supply Chains

Mohammad H. Eslami — Mon, 07 Oct 2024 08:23:39 GMT

Save the Date I Paper Development Workshop on “Envisioning Supply

Chains in a Post-Growth Era” for a Special Issue inJournal of Supply Chain Management- Dates: December 5-6, 2024: hybrid (Zoom and ESCP London Campus)

The aim of this workshop is to introduce the topic of post-growth in SCM and develop research ideas for submission to the SI. The workshop will be in two parts. First, the topic will be introduced to allow discussion of the main research themes. Second, submitted abstracts/papers will be discussed with the guest editors in order to provide initial feedback.

Do not miss this opportunity to engage with JSCM guest editors (Davide Luzzini, Joe Miemczyk, Veronica Devenin, Annachiara Longoni, and Bobby Banerjee) and develop your research ideas for submission to a special issue of JSCM.

Please find more information here.

The IPSERA Doctoral Workshop 2025

Mohammad H. Eslami — Thu, 05 Sep 2024 16:36:32 GMT

Dear IPSERA Community

The IPSERA Doctoral Workshop 2025 will take place on Sunday March 30, 2025 in Rotterdam! This is the perfect opportunity to present your research proposal and discuss further plans with faculty and peers.

The deadline for the regular submissions of the statement of interests is October 27. If you need a visa or more time due to traveling arrangements, we have an express process with the deadline of September 22.

For more information, please see: https://ipsera.com/DoctoralWorkshop2025

The IPSERA 2025 submission portal is now open

Mohammad H. Eslami — Mon, 02 Sep 2024 20:32:04 GMT

Dear IPSERA Community

The IPSERA 2025 submission portal is now open and we invite you to submit your best work to the conference.

The IPSERA Conference 2025 will take place in Rotterdam from March 30 to April 2, 2025! The theme of IPSERA 2025 is Room for Talent.

Kindly note that also this year we have “express submission” deadlines to offer an early opportunity for those in need of visa and/or anticipation in travelling plans (only for working paper abstracts and submissions for the Doctoral Workshop).

Please visit our official conference website to see the Key Dates, Call for Papers and Submission Guidelines: https://ipsera.com/ipsera2025

We are looking forward to welcoming you to the IPSERA Conference 2025 in Rotterdam.

On behalf ofErik van Raaij(Conference Chair) andAnna Nikulina(Conference Co-Chair)

IPSERA 2024: A Message from the President and Conference Chair

Sun, 17 Mar 2024 11:15:27 GMT

Leonardo Marques, IPSERA President and IPSERA 2024 Conference Chair, has this message for you:

2024 IPSERA Doctoral Workshop Program

Sun, 17 Mar 2024 11:11:08 GMT

We look forward to welcoming all participants to the 2024 IPSERA Doctoral Workshop. Please see the detailed breakdown of the program

IPSERA 2024 Doctoral Workshop: A message from the PhD Co-ordinator

Sun, 17 Mar 2024 11:06:30 GMT

Welcome to IPSERA 2024! Anni-Kaisa Kähkönen, IPSERA PhD Coordinator has a message for you too:

IPSERA 2024 Program Overview

Sun, 17 Mar 2024 10:56:10 GMT

Our 33rd annual gathering, IPSERA 2024: Emerging Alternatives, is approaching fast. Please see the conference program overview here. We encourage you to note down your preferred sessions to ensure you don't miss any.

We will kick off the conference with an Educators' Workshop and a Doctoral Workshop on Sunday, March 24th. From Monday, March 25th, to Wednesday, March 27th, we will have 234 paper presentations across 62 parallel sessions with more than 235 in-person and 55 online participants. In addition, we will have 8 leading-edge and thought-provoking professional development workshops throughout the conference.

We are looking forward to welcoming you to the IPSERA Conference 2024 in Rio from 24th March to 27th March 2024.

Call for papers: Journal of Supply Chain Management

Mon, 19 Feb 2024 16:53:51 GMT

Call for papers: Unchaining supply chains: Enabling transformative leaps towards regenerative socio-ecological systems

Submissions Deadline: 1 March 2024

Call for papers: Replication studies in Supply Chain Management

Submissions Deadline: 31 December 202

Call for papers: Supply chain resilience theory for tomorrow’s world

Submissions window: 1 November 2024 to 31 January 2025

Call for papers: Envisioning Supply Chains in a Post-Growth Era

Submissions Deadline: 31 March 2025

Further details can be found here.

Call for papers: Journal of Purchasing and Supply Management

Mon, 19 Feb 2024 16:49:34 GMT

Call for papers: Purchasing and Supply Management Education

Submission deadline: 2 March 2024

Call for papers: Digitalization for Sustainable Purchasing and Supply Chain Management

Submission deadline: 31 March 2024

Call for papers: Unchaining supply chains: Enabling transformative leaps towards regenerative socio-ecological systems

Submissions Deadline: 1 March 2024

Further information can be found here.

IPSERA Partners with JPSM

Mon, 19 Feb 2024 16:32:04 GMT

IPSERA have entered a new phase of their long-standing relationship with the Journal of Purchasing and Supply Management. Specifically:

1. JPSM will continue to be the exclusive conference special issue partner for IPSERA.

2. JPSM’s annual awards (best reviewer, best associate editor) will be featured at the annual gala event during the IPSERA annual conference

3. JPSM and IPSERA will provide joint workshops in various PSM topics for the entire IPSERA & JPSM community

4. The current EIC of JPSM will now join the IPSERA executive committee meetings a couple of times per year, engaging in discussion on research policy and alignment between JPSM and IPSERA

IPSERA Summer School 2024

Mon, 19 Feb 2024 16:21:11 GMT

Registration for the IPSERA Summer School is now live, if you are a PhD student and junior faculty member in procurement, we invite you to join the IPSERA PSM Summer school from June 25th to 28th, 2024. The summer school is hosted by Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University and supported by Erasmus Research Institute of Management (ERIM). This 26th edition features interactive sessions with international faculty including Melek Akın Ateş, John Gray, Louise Knight, and Kai Foerstl.

Earn credits for your PhD training program and enjoy daily networking lunches and dinner events. Also, IPSERA offers bursaries with additional sponsorship from Nevi.

Highlights from the IPSERA Online Event: (Re)-Shaping Supply Chains

Mohammad H. Eslami — Mon, 12 Feb 2024 09:18:09 GMT

In a world where digitalisation, decarbonisation, circularity, and geopolitical risks are reshaping supply chains, the need for collective action has never been more crucial. The recent IPSERA online event brought to the forefront the transformative power of collaboration across sectors.

During an insightful roundtable discussion on 7th February 2024, we delved into the roles of not-for-profit foundations such as Together for Sustainability (TfS), the Open Compute Project (OCP), and Fraunhofer ISS – CATENA-X in steering systemic transformations towards sustainable supply chains. These organizations exemplify how data sharing and open-source initiatives are pivotal in reshaping industries for the better.

Key takeaways:

- OCP is revolutionizing the Data Centre and Telecommunication industries by promoting open source and open collaboration in hardware.

- TfS is enhancing sustainability in the chemical supply chain through pooled supplier audits, carbon footprint standards, and data sharing among its 45+ members.

- Catena-X is creating a unified data standard across the automotive value chain, ensuring efficiency, sustainability, and innovation.

The event also spotlighted the critical role of academia, with young researchers Felicia Kemmer and Florian Paffrathemphasizing the need for deeper understanding of collective actions to address the grand challenges ahead.

A heartfelt thank you to our distinguished guests Michael Henke, Hervé Legenvre, and representatives (Gabriele Unger, Steve Helvie and Jürgen Schmelting) from TfS, OCP, and Fraunhofer ISS, along with all participants for a truly enriching discussion. Together, we are paving the way towards a more sustainable and collaborative future.

The 2024 IPSERA Doctoral Dissertation Award

Mohammad H. Eslami — Sat, 10 Feb 2024 12:41:38 GMT

We invite self-nominations for the 2024 IPSERA Doctoral Dissertation Award.

This award emerged as a natural consequence of IPSERA’s dedication to the support of young academics. The award signifies important contributions on phenomena that address PSM issues by a recently graduated PhD. The best doctoral dissertation in the field of Purchasing and Supply Management will be celebrated at the conference, receive a award certificate and a €500 monetary price. In order to be eligible for this award, a dissertation must address a phenomenon that is of importance to the PSM field and have been completed in the calendar year prior to the next IPSERA conference.

All applications will be confidential. Your application will be evaluated by a committee of experienced scholars in the field of PSM.

The application must include:

proof that the dissertation was completed in the year prior to the upcoming IPSERA conference;
max 2-page executive summary describing the research objectives, methods applied, main findings and contribution to PSM theory and practice;
list of any spin-off publications.

Please submit your application before February 29, 2024.

The award winner will be announced at the 33rd Annual IPSERA Conference in Rio de Janeiro. With questions, please write to network@ipsera.com (Robert Suurmond), the technical chair of the Dissertation Award committee.

IPSERA Team

IPSERA WORKSHOP (Re)-Shaping Supply Chains: A Collective Action Perspective

Wed, 31 Jan 2024 15:11:43 GMT

We would like to invite you to the online IPSERA workshop titled '(Re)-Shaping Supply Chains: A Collective Action Perspective'. As digitalization, decarbonization, circularity, and geopolitical risks are reshaping supply chains, such systemic transformations cannot be orchestrated by firms alone. This workshop aims to explore how collective action occurs.

The workshop is organized by Michael Henke and Hervé Legenvre as a round-table discussion where guest speakers Gabrielle Unger, Boris Otto, Felicia Kemmner and Florian Paffrath share their experiences and reflections on the topic.

Kindly use the link below to register for the workshop as we look forward to engaging with you.

(Re-)Shaping supply chains: a collective action perspective | SIG Workshop

The first IPSERA Africa Initiative Conference was held digitally on September 12, 2023

Mohammad H. Eslami — Wed, 13 Sep 2023 07:47:58 GMT

The first IPSERA Africa Initiative Conference convened digitally on September 12, 2023, uniting over 120 enthusiasts from across the African continent, including representatives from South Africa, Uganda, Kenya, Egypt, Cameroon, Ghana, and Nigeria and more nations.

Spanning 11 riveting presentations, the conference delved deep into pressing topics in purchasing and supply chain management such as:

-Social and behavioral dynamics in SCM
-Technological advancements in logistics and purchasing
-Sustainability initiatives
-Risk management and resilience strategies

The event was headlined by a keynote speech from Prof. Nat Boso from Ghana, who shared profound insights in a presentation titled, "Co-creating Purchasing and Supply Management Knowledge: Insights from Africa."

Following this, an exceptional session brought together editors from renowned journals in the field including the Journal of Supply Chain Management, Journal of Purchasing and Supply Management, and International Journal of Operations and Production Management. Under the moderation of Sherwat Elwan Ibrahim from Egypt, the session spotlighted the unique challenges and prospects facing African scholars, offering guidance on enhancing publishability in these journals.

Special thanks to Ade Oyedijo and Yasmine El-Henawy for organizing this pivotal initiative, and to all the participants who enriched the discussions with their feedback, support, and insights during the presentations.

As we reflect on the enriching insights garnered, we are left with a renewed anticipation for the growth and evolution in Africa's supply chain management landscape.

Job post: University of Sussex

Davide Luzzini — Mon, 17 Apr 2023 15:53:09 GMT

The Department of Management is looking to recruit a Professor of Operations Management to contribute to our research culture and teaching portfolios. We are inviting applications from candidates with research interests and expertise in operations; supply chain management; sustainability; circular economy and/or digital innovations.

Find all the details here: https://www.jobs.ac.uk/job/CZC623/professor-of-operations-management

Job post: Eindhoven University of Technology

Davide Luzzini — Tue, 04 Apr 2023 07:30:06 GMT

Eindhoven University of Technology, The Netherlands, has a vacancy for a professor of Procurement. The Chair will focus on Procurement and Innovative Networks and will have financial support from Nevi, ie the Dutch Association of Purchasing Management, The Netherlands.

Eindhoven University of Technology has a strong reputation in industrial engineering and innovation and had, in the past, the first academic chair on Purchasing and Supply Management.

Information about the job profile can be found here: Part-time Full Professor In Innovative Networks (0,3 FTE) | Technische Universiteit Eindhoven (tue.nl)

In case of any questions, please, feel free to contact Prof. Van Weele (a.j.vanweele@gmail.com).

JPSM Special Issue: Purchasing and Supply Management Education

Davide Luzzini — Fri, 24 Mar 2023 14:34:27 GMT

The purpose of this special issue on PSM education is to disseminate current research and practice in PSM education and pedagogy. The introduction of an ever-widening array of performance metrics and the increased expectations of students in a post-Covid educational landscape demands more research into how PSM education can be improved. To provide a structured and visible outlet for sharing a wide range of evolving pedagogical and teaching practices in the PSM field, it is hoped that this special issue will stimulate the development of teaching in PSM and provide a platform for future collaborative endeavours within the PSM and overall supply chain management scholarly community.

Download the call for papers

Procurement & Innovation Workshop

Davide Luzzini — Fri, 16 Dec 2022 13:00:00 GMT

IPSERA Procurement & Innovation Workshop: Exploring Private and Public Sector Crossroads
Friday 16th December 2022 14.00-16.30 CET

We would like to invite you to the Procurement & Innovation Workshop on Friday, 16th December 2022. The workshop is jointly hosted by two of the IPSERA Special Interest Groups: ‘Purchasing and Innovation’ and ‘Strategic Procurement in the Public Domain.

We will discuss procurement and innovation across private and public sector settings with the participation of Louise Knight, Thomas E. Johnsen, Kostas Selviaridis and Asta Salmi.

You are wholeheartedly invited to join the workshop. You can register here: https://lnkd.in/ekz_yes6

IPSERA 2023 Barcelona, 2-5 April

Davide Luzzini — Tue, 21 Jun 2022 07:01:21 GMT

Dear IPSERA Community, save the date! You are cordially invited to the IPSERA Conference 2023 that will be hosted by EADA Business School Barcelona from 2^nd to 5^th April 2023!

The theme of IPSERA 2023 is Systemic Change. Please check all the details on the conference website: www.ipsera2023.com

Gianluca Spina award for teaching excellence and innovation

Davide Luzzini — Wed, 01 Jun 2022 07:59:41 GMT

The Italian Association of Management Engineering (AiIG) and Gianluca Spina Association (AGLS) are pleased to announce a new award for excellence and innovation in teaching in memory of Gianluca Spina, Professor of the School of Management of Politecnico di Milano.

The instructions to participate are available here.

Submissions are to be entered by September 5th, 2022 and sent for the attention of the President of AiIG: presidenza-aiig@polimi.it.

The winning entry will be announced and presented by the winner at the plenary session (where necessary online) of the AiIG Annual Scientific Meeting (October 2022), receiving a prize of € 4,000, co-funded by AiIG and AGLS.

A Tribute for Prof. Mario Raffa

Frederik Vos — Wed, 23 Mar 2022 12:40:24 GMT

It is with great sorrow and sadness that the IPSERA community has learned of the passing of one of our great founders and incredible members of our community. Professor Alessandro Ancarani, former President of IPSERA, and Professor Attila Chikán, IPSERA Lifetime Achievement Award winner, have written fitting tributes.

Mario Raffa, former full professor of Management Engineering at the Federico II University of Naples, passed away on 10 March 2022 at the age of 75. During his long and distinguished career, Professor Raffa has influenced generations of students, scholars and professionals with his teaching skills and ground-breaking scientific research on innovation and entrepreneurship.

He developed his university career in Italy and abroad. In particular, he spent periods of study and research in UK, United States, Japan, as well as in numerous European countries, focusing on the relationship between new technologies, entrepreneurship and organizational change both in private companies and in the Public Administration. In Italy, he paid particular attention to the Campania region with reference to the transformation phenomena of its production system. This attention has led him to actively participate in the political life of his city, also assuming the position of Councillor for Development of the Municipality of Naples from May 2008 to June 2011.

Mario Raffa was a key figure for Management Engineering in Italy. At the Federico II University of Naples, he held, among others, the positions of President of the Board of the Degree Course in Management Engineering (from 1995 to 2002), Director of the Department of Management Engineering (from 2000-2005), Coordinator of the PhD in Management Engineering for several years, Scientific Director of ODISSEO, Observatory of Technological Innovation and Organization. From 2003 to 2008 he was Director of the Start Cup Federico II; in 2007 he was Scientific Director of the PNI-National Award for Innovation.

His research activity - for which he has received several international awards - concerns small innovative companies, subcontracting relationships, industrial organization, entrepreneurship. He was a member and collaborator of numerous national and international scientific associations including the Italian Association of Management Engineering (AiIG) - of which he was President in the two-year period 2003-2005, the International Council for Small Business (ICSB), the European Council for Small Business and Entrepreneurship (ECSB), International Purchasing & Supply Education & Research Association (IPSERA) - of which he was one of the founders and the first promoter, as well as chair and co-coordinator of two annual conferences (Ischia, 1997; Naples, 2012).

He has been a member of the editorial board of numerous national and international journals including the Journal of Small Business, the Journal of Purchasing and Supply Management, the Journal of Small Business Management.

Since 2009 he has been the first Italian to receive the prestigious White Wilford Fellow nominated by the ICSB - International Council for Small Business, for scientific, cultural and political merits on the issues of entrepreneurship and the birth and development of new businesses. Since 2016 he has been the first Italian to be awarded the European Council for Small Business and Entrepreneurship Fellows for merits in the field of research / teaching in entrepreneurship.

Mario Raffa was a person of great culture and sensitivity, kind and affable and a dear friend of many colleagues. He leaves a void but his lessons and dedication to scientific research will remain forever.

Professor Chikán's Tribute:

I join Professor Ancarani in praising the achievements of Mario and his enormous contribution to global knowledge both with his research and education. He was one of the leading figures of the generation which established global cooperation in purchasing and supply research, most prominently by founding and strengthening IPSERA.

At my invitation he was a frequent speaker of the IFPSM Summer Schools at the turn of the millennium and always fascinated participants by his professionalism and humanity. He was a true European by culture and manner. I feel lucky to have known him. RIP.

Professor Emeritus Attila Chikán

Co-President of HALPIM

Lifetime Achievement Awardee of IPSERA

IPSERA Conference 2022: JÖNKÖPING | April 10th-13th

Davide Luzzini — Thu, 10 Mar 2022 08:00:00 GMT

This year's conference will be held in Sweden and hosted by Jönköping University.

The conference theme aims to build bridges rather than walls. We encourage boundary bridging research over borders, cross disciplines, between industry and academia and more!

Conference homepage: https://ipsera.com/IPSERA2022

IPSERA Workshop: Sourcing from Startups I 9 March 2022, 14.00 CET

Davide Luzzini — Wed, 09 Mar 2022 13:00:00 GMT

This workshop aims to bring together scholars and selected professionals interested in Purchasing and Supply Management (PSM) (or procurement) to discuss the emerging topic of sourcing from startups.

The importance of sourcing innovative technologies and knowledge from suppliers is well-established. A more recent challenge concerns how to scout innovations from non-traditional suppliers, including suppliers from outside existing supply networks. In this context, sourcing from innovative startup companies is emerging as an opportunity but presents new challenges and therefore new ways of managing the sourcing process. Not surprisingly, this is rapidly becoming a key research theme in purchasing and innovation.

This workshop is part of the IPSERA Special Interest Group (SIG) on Purchasing and Innovation and is hosted by Audencia Business School and the Axys chair of Purchasing and Digital Innovation. The event will be online.

Schedule March 9, 2022: 14:00 - 17:00 CET

> Opening and Welcome - Thomas Johnsen and Francois Constant

> Academic Keynote - Stephan Wagner, Professor at ETH Zurich

> Practitioner Keynote 1 - Fabian Lampe, Head of Procurement at Archlet

> Practitioner Keynote 2 - Laurent Kinet, co-founder & CEO at Novable

> Small Group Discussions - Leonardo Marquez

Register here: https://ipsera.com/event-4657414

Once registered, you will receive the event link one day before the event.

Meet our new IPSERA executive committee member: Jo Meehan

Davide Luzzini — Sat, 26 Feb 2022 15:00:00 GMT

"Since attending my first IPSERA conference in Nantes in 2013, I have been honoured to be part of this vibrant, friendly, and supportive community. With my new role on the Executive Committee I have taken over responsibility for IPSERA news from the wonderful, Nadine Kiratli. Please do send items for the newsletters to news@ipsera.com and also make use of our increasing social media presence on Twitter, Linkedin and Facebook."

IPSERA Workshop: Towards Systemic Change I 27 January 2022, 16.00 CET

Davide Luzzini — Thu, 27 Jan 2022 15:00:00 GMT

You are invited to join the forthcoming IPSERA Workshop 'Towards Systemic Change' on 27th January at 15.00 GMT, 16.00 CET. This IJOPM special issue information session is free and open to everyone so please extend the invitation and invite your networks.

In this workshop, we will discuss how operations and supply chain management of socially driven enterprises contribute to change making.

Agenda:

Introduction to the IJOPM special issue (Annachiara Longoni, ESADE)
Basics of social impact supply chains (Mellie Pullman, University of Groningen)
The concept of systemic change (Davide Luzzini, EADA)
The social entrepreneur perspective (Gemma Sunyer, Fundación Ana Bella)

Useful links:

IJOPM special issue
IPSERA will host a conference special track. Check the conference program for updates.

IPSERA Workshop: Internet of Things I 17 November 2021, 15.30 CET

Jenny Bäckstrand — Fri, 08 Oct 2021 15:25:09 GMT

Dear IPSERA friends and family,
We cordially invite you to the forthcoming IPSERA workshop on Internet of Things (IoT).

This workshop gives our members the opportunity to present papers and ideas; to receive feedback ahead of the conference. There will be no invited speakers, there will be no keynote speeches. The microphone will be yours!

Our future IoT events will offer various formats, e.g., panels, keynote discussions, but this November workshop is research driven and we would like to hear your projects, research, and ideas.

Those that wish to present a paper shall get in touch with hlegenvre@eipm.org by the 8th of November.

Registration is open to the IPSERA members. You are wholeheartedly encouraged to present your work, take part in the discussion, and help our community grow.

IoT is about curiosity, openness, and friendship

“The Internet of thing (IOT) will bring a tectonic change in the structure of industries in the next 20 years. More disruptions and value chains reconfigurations must be anticipated. We have only seen the first sparks of a broad transformation. Many industry architectures will be significantly and sometime radically transformed”

And we claimed that we needed to study how “PSM functions will evolve on the forefront of such business-critical changes.”

Since 2017, we have pursued our exchanges through physical and virtual sessions; we discussed many times the scope of the SIG and we kept it rather open. We are interested in the role of PSM in sourcing digital capabilities and we are also interested in how digital technologies shape PSM organisations.

Through SIG & PDW we want to stimulate the international exchange of curiosity and experience among young and experienced researchers. The regular, open and friendly exchange of research approaches, methods, views and early research results on this complex topic, which will have a lasting impact on and change purchasing, appears to be increasingly important for participants to strive for open and holistic views. In addition, the early exchange of research projects stimulated and consolidated further work and cooperation among the members.

We shared our research interests; our research papers and we also built some common tools for data collection. We often discussed future research questions but most importantly we built a friendly and open network of academics who shared knack for technology, and it impact on SCM and PSM. Over time we have turned conversations into collaborations and landed a few papers in in our favourite journals such as JPSM and IJOPM

In 2020 and 2021 with the pandemic we kept our meeting virtual. It was great to see the faces of everyone smiling as we were joining our virtual sessions. It felt nice comforting and motivating to be altogether sharing news, interest, and research work.

Today the IPSERA IoT SIG might sound like a place where we talk about technology, but it is first and foremost an agora were curiosity, openness, and friendship blends together.

And …. We will meet again!

Michael Henke, Hervé Legenvre & Herbert Ruile

IPSERA Webinar to be hosted by the SIG Strategic Procurement in the Public Domain (SP-PD) late May

Sun, 02 May 2021 20:31:47 GMT

The newly formed SP-PD SIG will host its first webinar on either May 25^th or 26 at 15:00 CEST. This will be the last webinar of the academic year in the new and very successful series hosted by IPSERA.

Topic: Publishing Procurement Research in Public Administration Journals.

In the first hour, we will bring together editors of PA journals, and researchers who have examined the role of procurement studies in PA journals, and draw on IPSERA members’ (successful and not-yet-successful) experiences of targeting PA journals. Then the panel will identify and debate the publishing opportunities and challenges for SP-PD researchers. There will be plenty of opportunity for participants to raise issues and contribute to the discussion.

The webinar will be on Zoom and last two hours, starting at 1500 CEST. Look out for an email from IPSERA announcing the date and how to register.

RICC Pannonia: Academic Resilience

Sun, 02 May 2021 20:24:19 GMT

Confronted with the Covid-19 Pandemic, ongoing research projects requiring group attendance for experiments were mummified. This affected in particular our project on gamification and decision making under uncertainty in buyer-supplier relations. Questionnaires were ready for interviews and experiments, but….no students, no groups of participants allowed. Also planned IPSERA workshops were postponed.

So, what did it mean? Just waiting? Biding our time? Instead, the rather unique situation where people had to face the ultimate uncertainty became topic of research. We were able to involve senior managers of 11 hotels to get involved in a 6 month 3 wave panel study. Our main research questions were “What goes on in their minds? Which topics and themes play a role? How do they invoke resilience?” 47 interviews later, we know. Our IPSERA Competitive paper describes the results: “Invoking resilience during the pandemic”. Full paper available, just send an email! And we are still working on this project, expanding the scope of the interviews. The last stage of this temporary project ends on the 1st September, when we plan to revitalise the original project on gamification. An IPSERA workshop on Gamification and decision making under uncertainty, is planned for mid-October 2021: either ’live’, on-line or a mix.

What else did we do in the meantime? We started two new PhD projects: (1) the material and money flows between the components of the tourism filière - starting 1 September 2020 (Alishan Karimov) - and (2) Block chain technology in a sustainable food supply chain, starting right now. Both are supposed to result in IPSERA contributions, of course.

Hence, in spite of the pandemic, we managed to keep our research going, as a sign of proper academic resilience. But of course, we keep our fingers crossed!

Dirk-Jan F. Kamann

A SIG for Strategic Procurement in the Public Domain (SP-PD)

Sun, 02 May 2021 20:17:06 GMT

The SIG held its inaugural meeting and hosted a panel session at the recent IPSERA conference – both were very well attended, leading to lively discussions and a commitment to arrange more before too long!

What’s in the name? The scope of the SIG is to cover strategic procurement for organizations whose primary aim is to serve citizens, patients etc, rather than shareholders – hence the title to reflect working for the public good, not necessarily public sector based.

Shared interests and priorities We brainstormed ideas for SIG goals and activities around 3 themes: knowledge, profile and community building. Suggestions include discussions on data collection, debating possible research outlets and the impact of our research, and building synergies within different disciplines interacting in the public domain. Our thanks to Klaas Stek for capturing the discussion and voting:

At the end of the meeting, participants completed a small survey on their preferred goals and activities. As a first output we now have a (GDPR compliant ) list of SIG members for the members, to help networking. If you want to sign up, please email Louise Knight at l.a.knight@utwente.nl.

Covid-19 and Public Procurement Panel Session Colleagues exchanged views on the longer-term implications of the pandemic on public/healthcare procurement research. From Canada to Germany, and from the US to England and Italy, reflections were sometimes very similar and other times divergent, but above all thought-provoking. A thank you to Tara Hartley, Michael Essig, Robert Handfield, Joanne Meehan and Gian Luigi Albano for your insightful perspectives.

A Network of PhD students A top priority for the SIG is to facilitate networking among PhD students. Please encourage students who are committed to, or contemplating, doctoral studies in SP-PD to get in contact (email esmee.peters@pprc.eu). They don’t have to be members of IPSERA yet – the Association is committed to student access and often provides free/discounted places/membership – we can work out a suitable arrangement. We’ll be in contact soon with PhD students on the mailing list.

What’s next? A webinar end of May - all are welcome!

Journal of Purchasing and Supply Management: Winners of the Annual Awards and a Brief Update

Sun, 02 May 2021 19:27:40 GMT

As ever, we were delighted to have the opportunity to announce the annual JPSM Award winners at the IPSERA conference. The last year has been busier than ever for JPSM. In 2020, we received 433 submissions; our previous ‘best’ was 299 in 2017. This is very good news, but also means there is even more pressure on our team of highly committed Associate Editors and the diligent reviewers. So, we begin with a huge thank-you to all JPSM authors, reviewers and handling editors.

This year, all the awards are shared between 2 or 3 winners:

Outstanding Associate Editor We wish to acknowledge the very significant contribution of two of the newest recruits to the editorial team: Guido Orzes and Andrea Patrucco. In a short time, they have dealt with rather a lot of submissions, made some difficult decisions, and exemplified JPSM’s developmental approach to the editorial process.
Outstanding Reviewer Based on all reviews since Jan 2019 and advice from the editorial team, and taking into account the number, quality and timeliness of reviews, three candidates stood out from what (we are pleased to report) was a long short-list: Myles Garvey, Mellie Pullman and Frederik Vos. We are extremely grateful to them, and the other reviewers who dedicate many hours each year to this crucial, ‘behind the scenes’ role.
Best Paper In consultation with the Associate Editors, we drew up a shortlist of the best papers published in 2020, based on the three criteria used in all editorial decisions. Six papers featured on this list. To paraphrase a comment made by one of the AEs involved in selecting the winners: they all do well on rigour; the decision rests on originality and significance – and it’s a tough choice.

The joint winners are:

Matteo Kalchschmidt, Sebastian Birolini, Mattia Cattaneo, Paolo Malighetti and Stefano Paleari The geography of suppliers and retailers

and

Harri Lorentz, Anna Aminoff, Rikka Kaipia, Matti Pihlajamaa, Jesse Ehtamo and Kari Tanskanen
Acquisition of supply market intelligence – An information processing perspective

Looking ahead First, we include the slide announcing the best paper shortlist to highlight the journal’s international outlook, a strength JPSM shares with IPSERA. However it also reveals the under-representation of authors outside western Europe and north America – an issue we want to continue to try to address, and for which we welcome suggestions.

Second, in December, we complete our second term as Editors in Chief. If all goes to plan, we will be announcing the JPSM EIC team for 2022-2024 in the summer, so there is plenty of time for the transition.

Louise Knight and Wendy Tate
Co-Editors in Chief, Journal of Purchasing and Supply Management

Meet our new IPSERA executive committee member: Davide Luzzini

Sun, 02 May 2021 19:24:30 GMT

"I participated to my first IPSERA conference in 2007 in Bath. Since then, every single conference experience has been incredible, with a special mention from the hearth for the edition in Pretoria. The imprint that a community like this can leave on a person is just mind-blowing. I am not exaggerating if I say that the connections I made since that first IPSERA (Erik, Finn, Alistair, Katri, besides the Polimi team) and the ones who followed have largely influenced my career. I always thought that sooner or later I should have tried to give back, and now it seems the perfect moment. The IPSERA spirit is more alive than ever, and the association outreach has improved dramatically in the last years. Everything came naturally and I am super happy to be at service with great colleagues and friends from the EC and the community overall."

Prof. Davide Luzzini joined IPSERA Executive Committee in April 2021.

Davide (Ph.D., Politecnico di Milano) is Full Professor at EADA Business School (Spain). He is also adjunct professor at MIP Graduate School of Business (Italy). Previously he held positions at Audencia Business School (France) and Zaragoza Logistics Center-MIT Scale (Spain). He has international teaching experience at all levels. His research has been focusing on Purchasing and Supply Chain Management for many years. His current research deals with Social Impact Supply Chains, Food and Innovation Networks, and the orchestration of Buyer-Supplier Relationships. In his career, Davide participated in several publicly and privately funded research projects and collaborated with several companies, including IBM, Luxottica, Leonardo, Mediolanum Bank, Henkel, ABB, and Ashoka. He has published his research in several journals and serves as Associate Editor for the Journal of Purchasing and Supply Management and Operations Management Research.

Davide is an IPSERA member since 2007 and he coordinated the Doctoral Workshop in the years 2014-2018.

Meet our new IPSERA executive committee member: Robert Suurmond

Sun, 02 May 2021 19:15:19 GMT

“The past weeks I think, have shown to everyone that IPSERA is not just an annual conference, but it is an association, if not community. Even if we are only online, we still manage to produce the best sessions and create a lot of interaction between all members. As such, I’ve always felt at ease at the conference and other events because of the friends I’ve made. As an association, it is time for me to also give back to the community that I have so greatly benefited from. With your blessing, I look forward to serving on the IPSERA executive committee in any particular fashion that is deemed necessary.”

Robert Suurmond is young researcher in the field of purchasing and supply chain management and innovation. Robert is the father of two young boys and lives and works in Maastricht. He joined IPSERA 2015 in Amsterdam for the first time and has only missed one since.

Robert works as an assistant professor at Maastricht University’s School of Business and Economics, in the department of Marketing and Supply Chain Management. He holds a BSc, MSc, and PhD from RSM Erasmus University with a focus on purchasing and supply chain management. “Research-wise I focus on the intersection between supply chain, sourcing (services), and innovation. I also have a long history of work on systematic reviews and meta-analysis, including published work but also the development of software and trainings.”

His research has been published in leading academic journals, practitioner reports, and other media outlets. He regularly serves as a reviewer of various journals and conferences and is now serving as one of the Guest Editors of the IPSERA 2021 SI for JPSM. Robert teaches in bachelor, master, PhD, and executive education at various institutions. Besides regular research and education tasks, Robert heads the MSc in Supply Chain Management as program leader.

I am very grateful for the nomination and support of the AGM to take up this role and look forward to working with the amazing EC and IPSERA wider community to take IPSERA into the next 30 years.

In particular I want to make sure that we can carry the 30 years of IPSERA’s friendly traditions of comradery and actually constructive feedback on to the next 30 years and ensure that the next generation of diverse IPSERA members and participants also become a part of this."

Message from incoming IPSERA Vice President Leo Marques

Sun, 02 May 2021 19:09:44 GMT

#IPSERASpirit live, bright and expanding

I am honored to start my term as Vice-President of IPSERA. This community embraced me in 2013 when I attended the Doctoral Workshop in lovely Nantes, France. There I met IPSERA members that became colleagues, co-authors, and great friends. The community has taught me a lot; and, since 2018, I have been lucky to serve at the Executive Committee.

I am humbled be considered up to the post, challenged to keep up the great work done by those that preceded me, and energized by an amazing Executive Committee led by our President Donna Marshall with Antonella Moretto, Anni-Kaisa Kähkönen, Frederik Vos, George Zsidisin, Hakan Karaosman, Jenny Bäckstrand, Marika Tuomela-Pyykkönen, Nadine Kiratli; and most recently, Davide Luzzini and Robert Suurmond. I could not write an incoming message without citing the EC members. I should also pay my gratitude to Michael Henke, Steve Kelly and Niels Uenk. The last years taught me that IPSERA is sustained by team effort and collegiality.

Early April we have successfully closed the #IPSERAConference 2021, which marked our first online conference and our 30^th birthday celebration – two respectable achievements. Feedback tells us we have manage to adapt to troubled times while keeping the community engaged and ensuring the financial health of our association. We, as a community, should all be proud and enjoy a nice sense of accomplishment as we read this Newsletter.

In the years to come, we should advance on embracing diversity and enhancing our global reach and impact – at education and research fronts. We should also explore new ways to foster engagement in-between conferences – either online or offline, now that we have mastered ‘the beast’, and for that we need help from the whole community in finding innovative ways to connect, stay together, and share knowledge.

Happiness and joy fill my heart thinking that I have been giving the opportunity to keep serving our community so full of #IPSERASpirit ! Hope to catch up soon!

Leonardo Marques

IPSERA Vice President

Message from IPSERA president Donna Marshall

Sun, 02 May 2021 18:38:39 GMT

It was an amazing IPSERA conference. I was absolutely dreading the conference. I had months of sleepless nights thinking the technology would let us down. I had images of queues of people and a full inbox of demands for refunds. But, if anything, the opposite happened. The technology was great, the platform worked really well and my inbox has been full of messages of positivity and support.

There are so many highlights from this conference and I’d like to just mention a few. The panels Wendy organised, and seemed to mostly host as well, were incredibly insightful. Hakan Karaosman’s fashion panel with some of the top names in fashion and in fashion research was incredible, the Dean’s panel and the two sustainability panels were definitely highlights for me.

I wish I could have cloned myself as there were so many things I wanted to attend but couldn’t. I’ve heard great things about all the panels, including the Meet the Editors Panel, Public Procurement Panel, Ethics and Sustainability Panel and Teaching Sustainability Panel, Sining Panel and the Re/Near/Offshoring Panel; and the incredible workshops including the Meta-Analysis Workshop, Sourcing Strategies and Circular Economy Workshop, Sourcing Services and Service Supply Chains Workshop, Healthcare Purchasing and Supply Management Workshop, Experimental Design Workshop, so congratulations to everyone involved and in particular to Jenny Backstrand and Arni Hallderson who also seemed to be hosting quite a few of these workshops!

Two highlights for me were getting to see everyone and to reminisce about the 30 years of IPSERA and marvel at our friends in the IPSERA’s Got Talent event and also Robert Suurmond and Steve Kelly’s Everything IPSERA Quiz. I am being incredibly biased when I say I’ve never seen social occasions work too well on zoom but I think we cracked it and the IPSERA spirit really shone through.

The standard of the research presentation I attended was also so high. I was in four papers from Masters students, Fanny Chen at Erasmus University, Rotterdam; and Benjamin, Shantal, Dolf and Polien, Masters students of Klass Stek at Twente, Cassia Yamanaka who is working with Leo Marques at Coppead and Feigao Huang, Ryan Lile and Sarha Nur, working with Andrea Sordi and Wendy Tate. The standard of their work was amazing given that they are only just starting this rigorous academic journey. We often think of our PhDs being our youngest, or at least earliest IPSERA group but the Masters really seem to be picking up the pace too. So definitely a community to watch out for in the future.

I’d also like to say a huge thank you to Wendy Tate. For those of you who know Wendy, you will know that she is nothing short of a superwoman. Not only has she been organising two conferences, the physical conference in Knoxville and the online conference, but also managing, organising and chairing so many panels and workshops, and having unceasing energy throughout the conference. Wendy, the whole of IPSERA stands up and applauds you for the truly amazing job you have done.

I’d also like to thank Ryan Lile for being such a support to Wendy and for organising and directing all the stage management. You were such a great part of the organising team. And, I’d like to thank all our stage managers, who kept the whole conference running, who made sure everyone could get into the sessions, were able to present and could ask questions. You were the backbone of the conference and our heartfelt thanks go out to you all.

Ryan Lile – Director of Stage Managers

Annie Dohmen

Avril Sun

Favour Mba

Faygao Huang

Georgios Vousinas

Guido Orzes

Iryna Maliasina

Jade Chu

Jan Spreitzenbarth

Junwoo Cha

Mark Soleski

Thu Trang Hoang

I’d also like to say thank to the amazing Executive Committee and in particular, Fred Vos, Leo Marques, Jenny Backstrand and Hakan Karaosman who took on the mammoth task of getting to grips with the platform, organising training, taking over trouble shooting, constantly updating and communicating with the community and ensuring the smooth running of the conference. You were absolutely amazing and we can’t thank you enough.

I’d also like to give a special thanks to the IPSERA’s Got Talent Team: Anni-Kaisa Kähkönen, Hakan Karaosman, Helen Walker and Olly Kennedy. And also to the Everything IPSERA Quiz organisers and masters Robert Suurmond and Steve Kelly.

And a big thank you to the rest of the Executive Committee for all they were doing behind the scenes of the conference including Anni-Kaisa Kähkönen, Antonella Morretto, George Zsidisin, Marika Tuomela-Pyykkönen, Nadine Kiratli, Niels Uenk And Steve Kelly, and who have worked almost non-stop over the past year to keep our community going.

A huge thank you also goes to our wonderful sponsors: Nevi, the top purchasing and supply network in the Netherlands; and our amazing Supply Chain Finance Community. The support you gave us really provided us with so much comfort and made sure that we could make financial decisions that had a major positive impact on our community. Nevi, for example, sponsored all the Dutch PhDs so they could attend the IPSERA conference for free. Thank you so much!

My final and biggest thank you as always, goes to our incredible IPSERA community. Our amazing panelists and attendees, workshop hosts and participant and session chairs and presenters. You make this conference every year. Without your support, your research, your incredible presentations and the amount of energy and fun you bring, this would just be another run-of-the-mill conference. You have make it into something unique and special and I am so proud and humbled to be part of this incredible, insightful, wise and fun community.

We will hopefully see you all next year for IPSERA in Jönköping, to enjoy the peace and tranquillity of Sweden’s beautiful lake district!

Donna Marshall

IPSERA President

Doing doctoral research in times of COVID-19: Honey Zimmerman

Wed, 03 Mar 2021 23:13:28 GMT

“I think Covid19 has forced me to be more efficient and hone my time management skills as I juggle many responsibilities from home.”

Although Covid19 has changed many aspects of daily life, including work and research, I choose to focus on the opportunities it has created. The pandemic has basically forced us to conduct our interactions virtually, but without that, I may never have had the opportunity to participate in IPSERA events. As a wife, a mother of four young children, and full-time assistant professor, while also a doctoral student, I may not have been able to take the time away and travel to the doctoral workshop as a student this year. However, because it is virtual, it is an honor to have been accepted and a privilege to participate.

As a doctoral student, I am a novice researcher. So although I have little with which to compare my experience, Covid19 has created a shift in virtual data collection for qualitative data. I will be conducting virtual focus groups instead of traditional face-to-face interviews. I will be interacting with my research committee via video conferencing and emails instead of in-person meetings and presentations. I think Covid19 has forced me to be more efficient and hone my time management skills as I juggle responsibilities. Participating in an accountability group with fellow researchers in my doctoral cohort has been key to staying focused and accomplishing weekly goals towards my research. Additionally, doctoral workshops, like IPSERA, are incredibly valuable in providing feedback and encouraging deeper analysis of my study design.

Honey Zimmerman, CPSM, C.P.M.

UMSL-DBA student

“When one door closes, another opens. If that one closes, there is a window. If the window will not open, hammers work well.”

COVID-19 has been a challenge for almost all of us. It has also shed light to those not familiar with supply chain management as to the criticality of our field in supporting humankind. One can argue that some of the developments with Industry 4.0 technologies have been beneficial for improving supply chain performance and hence, our capabilities and successes in overcoming many of the obstacles arising from the pandemic. Honey Zimmerman’s dissertation is getting to the core of our understanding in how Industry 4.0 technologies, in conjunction with the relationships cultivated between supply chain entities, support and facilitate inter-organizational efforts to procure, produce and distribute products and services needed for us to endure these challenging times. My hunch is that she will try to open the second door first before wielding the hammer.

George A. Zsidisin, Ph.D., CPSM, C.P.M.

John W. Barriger III Professor

University of Missouri – St. Louis

Doing doctoral research in times of COVID-19: Débora Guimarães Masullo

Wed, 03 Mar 2021 23:00:32 GMT

"A two-sided coin: tough challenges in the last year, but valuable opportunities ahead"

The Covid19 pandemic has deeply affected our day-to-day activities. To many of us, it meant a life-changing event. Coping with an overload of housework and hygiene procedures while caring for a relative with a sudden severe illness that eventually passed away had a significant impact in the research progress. PhD colleagues experienced varied impact: those dealing with children’s homeschooling reported increased stress, others experienced depression due to isolation.

The impact on research was not only characterized by effects of psychological issues, but also by changes in the objects of study as firms adapting to the crisis naturally reduced their openness to interview and data access. Those researchers caught in the stage of fieldwork found themselves facing stronger restrictions to collect data. Some colleagues even pivoted the research topic to focus on the evolution and impacts of Covid19 in businesses.

Despite the challenges, we could find a lot of support from faculty and colleagues. In our case, the adaption to online teaching was fast, and the use of online meetings and classes were fundamental to motivate the cohort and contribute to the advancement of research and learning. Opportunities in online teaching supported our careers.

It is expected that some procedures for Covid19 prevention will be maintained throughout 2021 and a mix of in-person and online activities will be here to stay, given the advantages of remote activities such as attending webinars from anywhere in the world for a reduced cost. In addition, the intensification of online tools can help students and scholars to better communicate research impact and nurture multidisciplinary and international collaboration. In this sense, academic conferences and seminars can be a structural support to PhD students and new ways of online networking within academia could be developed to further expand opportunities for co-authorship and development for early career researchers.

Doing doctoral research in times of COVID-19: Iryna Maliatsin

Wed, 03 Mar 2021 22:58:47 GMT

“Doing one’s best in a pandemic is different”

It was a good hard year. The first news threads about pandemics were not so alarming, but a “new normal” has come and we have learned to live it. Working from home, wearing masks, avoiding handshakes, keeping distance, etc. What seemed like a quest at the beginning soon became a tiring routine. I believe that we all faced many inconveniences: being away from our families during holidays, constantly rescheduling bid celebrations, being under pressure of sad news and canceled plans. I would love to say that my work and progress have not been impacted. Sadly, it isn’t true. But the beginning is always the hardest. The most important thing that I learned from the pandemic is to be kinder to myself. To remember that one of the most important qualities we, doctoral students, have is our great passion and creativity. Every day is exciting, academia is a constant adventure. But as in every relationship, the love feeling needs some space. Friends, hobbies, reading non-dissertation-related books, mindfulness meditation, sport, dancing, coffee in cafes, learning a new language, etc. Dedicating time to those things will, in fact, make the academic work more successful. Funnily, I discovered this truth thanks to the pandemic. Even though I did not probably do as much as I would hope, I achieved a harmony of my work and life balance. An academic career is a long journey and it would be sad to run out of fuel too early. Let’s do our best but remember that doing one’s best in a pandemic is a very different thing. I believe that in a time of lack of communication, doctoral students should seek any suitable opportunity to meet other researchers online. Sharing your work in progress with others can give a new perspective and open eyes to things not considered before. I see IPSERA doctoral workshop as an excellent opportunity not only engaged with fellow doctoral students but receive feedback from more experienced researchers on how to improve my study. I am grateful to the conference and workshop organizers to take the extra effort to move the activities online. I think that following a routine is important to feel in control of your progress. I wish my fellow doctoral students to be kinder to themselves and be open to new opportunities of ”online” pandemic times, as they might be surprisingly exciting. Good luck!

Doing doctoral research in times of COVID-19: Anne Ratsimandresy

Wed, 03 Mar 2021 22:54:42 GMT

During the sanitary crisis, all doctoral students had to face the closure of schools, libraries and the psychological difficulties of confined life. However, each was affected to a different degree and, thus, more or less delayed in their thesis work. I feel that I have been well surrounded and that I am one of the lucky ones. My school, ESCP Business School, was extremely responsive and all the doctoral courses were adapted to distance learning within a few weeks. When I too had to switch to the teachers' side to give the courses and teach for the first time in my life by distance learning a few months ago, I could benefit from great technical and pedagogical support so as not to add stress to this first experience! I felt a great sense of belonging with the whole teaching staff, a lot of informal exchanges initiated by more experienced teachers who were keen to help their young colleagues in these particular circumstances. In this sense the Covid crisis was an opportunity, that of an accelerator of links, at least professionally, paradoxically!

At the beginning of the crisis, when the lock-down was decreed and events, conferences and symposia were postponed or cancelled, my PhD fellow students and I all had concerns about the impact that this might have on our progression. Our doctoral school emphasises a lot the importance of participating in these gatherings and we were afraid that this lack of opportunity to meet other researchers to share our work, receive valuable feedback from academics working in the same field or simply the lack of visibility would make it more difficult to write our thesis and might also harm our employability after the crisis. In the end, the reorganisation was quick and efficient, and I was able to attend such events online: the IPSERA doctoral workshop in February, the workshop dedicated to sustainable supply chains in November. Each time there was space for exchanges, with break-out rooms for example, and that really makes a difference. Even if the videoconference format is not easy to manage and requires reorganisation, it also has its advantages: it is a little less intimidating and this is not negligible for a beginner researcher :) More generally, I was particularly and pleasantly surprised by the orientation given to supply chain research : to contribute to a way out of the crisis with our skills as researchers, calls for papers on resilience, reorganisation, rebound of supply chains have flourished almost everywhere and, above all, a special place has been given to sustainable supply chains in this context, exactly as at the ISPERA event on the 30^th of November. As this is my field of research, I could only be pleased about this.

Anne Ratsimandresy, PhD Student

Joe Miemczyk, Supervisor

Doing doctoral research in times of COVID-19: Madelon Wind

Wed, 03 Mar 2021 22:41:19 GMT

"IPSERA doctoral workshop even more important in these times"

I am Madelon Wind, external doctoral student at Utrecht University (UU) and University of Twente (UT) in the Netherlands. I also work as researcher and consultant at the Public Procurement Research Centre (PPRC). My research revolves around the topic of building and maintaining ‘buyer-supplier’ relationships in the public sector, in the context of municipalities procuring youth care. Fredo Schotanus (UU) and Louise Knight (UT) are my supervisors.

COVID-19 has influenced the way in which I conduct my research greatly. I started setting up my research just before COVID-19 hit Europe. And both my supervisors also just started working at new universities just before that. Where you would normally have regular meetings at your professors’ offices, all of our discussions about the theme and later on my research plan had to be done online, except for one early kick-off meeting. This is how it is, but I am looking forward to meeting in real life, getting to know more about the others and their lives via the small talk at the coffee machine. Also, the unplanned discussions you have with your research colleagues at the university are really valuable, not only by discussing literature, but also about things like structure and research methods in general.

Nevertheless, I am satisfied with what we ‘produced’ in 2020: my research plan has been approved by both my professors as well as the research director. So, now I can really start with conducting the research I proposed! I am therefore very happy that I am accepted as one of this year’s students for the IPSERA doctoral workshop. For me, the timing is excellent: my plans are still rather flexible, and I am eager to have an in-depth discussion about them. I think that even more than in other times the doctoral workshop is of high relevance. The doctoral workshop provides the explicit opportunity to discuss your research with colleagues (around the world): something that is generally less easy due to COVID-19.

Of course, but also in terms of progress I hope that COVID-19 soon starts to lose its grip on the world. I have an interesting paper planned in which I propose longitudinal research, but I could not start this research yet because of the virus. I think it is relevant, though, that COVID-19 underlines the (practical) importance of my research project: more than ever the relationships between municipalities and youth care providers are of high importance to deal with the situation at hand in our country. And more than ever it is clear that the provision of youth care is very important for our society. I also see this in my work as researcher/consultant, in which I most often work in the social domain. My research and advisory projects go hand-in-hand, from which I learn a lot both ways!

Concluding, I am very much looking forward to IPSERA-DW 2021 and to the rest of the (scientific) year!

Madelon Wind, PhD Student

Louise Knight, Supervisor

Fredo Schotanus, Supervisor

Vaccine supply chains: Collaboration is the key to success

Wed, 03 Mar 2021 22:20:40 GMT

The Covid-19 pandemic has raised awareness of supply chains. Things that few people thought twice about before — like toilet paper being readily available on supermarket shelves — suddenly made the headlines when they didn’t happen anymore. Sourcing personal protective equipment (PPE) became a hotly debated issue and, towards the end of 2020, vaccine supply and distribution caught the public attention.

Collaboration in existing and new ways became common place. New collaborations and ventures were encouraged to respond to global scarcity of items such as ventilators, hand sanitiser and PPE. Researchers were asked to respond to Covid-19 rapid funding calls to understand the magnitude and impact of the pandemic on all aspects of our lives. The outcome of which quickly led to the generation of a wealth of intelligence and paved the way to the development of numerous viable vaccines.

The initial supply shortages and the complexity of distributing temperature-sensitive and labile vaccines will not have come as a surprise to many of us working in this area. With the first vaccines gaining authorisation, terms like hubs and ultra-cold chains made their way into the media. We first proposed to publish a media article on vaccine supply chain issues in September 2020 but were quickly told that there wasn’t much interest at the moment. The interest came early December 2020. We responded to this by producing a series of three articles relating to the vaccine rollout programme as reported globally.

Tens of thousands of people have read our articles since December. Requests for contributions from radio, television, and print media followed. It has been an exhilarating though time-consuming experience. Most importantly, it was been a joy to use our expertise to condense a vast amount of complex information into comprehensible chunks and to do our part in fighting misinformation.

The Covid-19 vaccine supply chain is inherently complex due to the strict guidelines for the movement and storage of the vials, as well as the sheer scale of rolling out newly developed products to the entire world. Capacity issues exist on the supply side as production facilities are being ramped up. The equipment to safely transport the products is being deployed. Thousands of flights are needed to distribute the vaccines around the globe, in the midst of the greatest ever crisis of the air transport industry.

The demand side is also experiencing challenges. Various countries are being criticised for their slow roll-out of vaccinations. While large vaccination hubs are appealing in terms of ensuring appropriate handling and storage of vaccines, reaching vulnerable populations is much easier through a decentralised model of local vaccination centres at doctors’ surgeries, pharmacies, and care homes. Logistically, that raises questions of waste, both through user errors and through a mismatch of supply and demand. More recently the delays associated with vaccines caused by supplier capacity issues have reminded us of the importance of procurement and contracting decisions in sourcing these vital products. Trust is imperative in collaborations and this is especially pertinent now.

We would be the first to remind our academic colleagues that there are many areas in which purchasing and supply chain professionals/academics can contribute their expertise to support business and social agendas. We have found that, as in so many situations, collaboration is key. This work on the vaccine supply chain is the first time we have collaborated. It has worked exceedingly well. Our first vaccine article reportedly having a ‘reach’ of 2.5 million readers.

Different experience and disciplines (one of us is employed by a School of Pharmacy and Medical Sciences, the other by a Business School) offer complementary points of view. It is important to understand what each of us can contribute and also what we are not familiar or comfortable with.

These are confusing times full of complex problems. None of us are able to solve or even comprehend them all. But as purchasing and supply chain professionals, we can all add a part to the larger puzzle. Our expertise is probably more needed than ever before. Let’s contribute. Together.

References

COVID vaccine: some waste is normal – but here's how it is being kept to a minimum

https://theconversation.com/covid-vaccine-some-waste-is-normal-but-heres-how-it-is-being-kept-to-a-minimum-152772

COVID vaccines are starting to arrive – here’s how everyone will get them. The Conversation.

https://theconversation.com/covid-vaccines-are-starting-to-arrive-heres-how-everyone-will-get-them-151498

Vaccines are here, but how will we get them to billions of people. The Conversation.

https://theconversation.com/vaccines-are-here-but-how-will-we-get-them-to-billions-of-people-151132

The Authors

Liz Breen Director of the Digital Health Enterprise Zone (DHEZ), University of Bradford, Reader in Health Service Operations, University of Bradford

https://theconversation.com/profiles/liz-breen-526613

Sarah Schiffling Senior Lecturer in Supply Chain Management, Liverpool John Moores University

https://theconversation.com/profiles/sarah-schiffling-1009067

Reflections about the very first IPSERA online Doctoral Workshop by Anni-Kaisa

Wed, 03 Mar 2021 22:04:51 GMT

I was happy to host the very first IPSERA online Doctoral Workshop which took place February 18, 2021. We had 78 participants registered for the workshop which shows that people are really interested about PhD research. We had such a wonderful workshop where the PhD students of our community shared their research. We had 16 PhD student presentations representing PhD research from different countries and different continents. The PhD students of this year were Jan Martin Spreitzenbarth, Gregor Möllers, Michela Guida, Mickaël Cïta, Anne Ratsimandresy, Max Emanuel Schwarzer, Tommaso Calzolari, Yujia Han, Favour Uzoma Mba, Kati Marttinen, Débora Masullo de Goes, Alessio Ronchini, Iryna Maliatsina, Murielle Francillette, Madelon Wind and Honey Zimmerman. This year PhD research focused on IoT, artificial intelligence, big data and the role of these in purchasing and supply management. Another popular topic was again this year sustainability and, in particular, circular economy. We were also able to enjoy the wonderful keynote speech by professor Erik van Raaij who shared some insights about reviewing and publishing.

The faculty mentors have a key role in successful workshop and this year our PhD students got excellent feedback from their mentors in a friendly IPSERA atmosphere.

Big thanks to our faculty mentors – Andrea Patrucco, Anne Touboulic, Guido Orzes, Arash Azadegan, Robert Suurmond, Antonella Moretto, Aki Jääskeläinen, Thomas Johnsen, Wendy Tate, Leonardo Marques, Federico Caniato, Donna Marshall, Steven Carnovale, Jo Meehan, Davide Luzzini, George Zsidisin – for your time and effort in helping the PhD students of our community to develop their research further.

Even though the online version worked well, we hope that the next IPSERA Doctoral Workshop in 2022 can be organized in person. In a meanwhile, hopefully we’ll see you all at the IPSERA 2021 online conference March 29 – April 1, 2021.

Anni-Kaisa Kähkönen

IPSERA Doctoral Workshop coordinator

Professor of Supply Management

LUT University, Lappeenranta, Finland

Report from the RICC at Audencia

Wed, 03 Mar 2021 21:54:05 GMT

A Difficult but Exciting Year for the Audencia RICC

The Audencia IPSERA RICC revolves around the Audencia Sustainable Supply Chain Management Group that is part of our Business & Society Department. The research interests of the group span a wide range of topics related to purchasing and supply chain management, but sustainability is one of our core interests as is the role of purchasing in innovation. Although 2020 was naturally a difficult year due to Covid-19 it was also a very busy year with lots of activity involving the RICC.

Audencia is part of the IPSERA SIG in Purchasing & Innovation and as part of this we have dedicated time to a Special Topic Forum (STF) on Purchasing & Innovation in Journal of Purchasing & Supply Management (JPSM). Manuscripts are currently undergoing review and/or being revised and we look forward to the outcome of this process.

We also organized an online workshop on Purchasing & Supply Management Digitalization. This workshop was organized in collaboration with two other SIGs - ‘Supply Chain Finance’ and ‘Internet of Things’ – and generated a great deal of interests amongst the over 50 participants. Considering the success of this event, we expect that this will not be the last joint SIG event.

We have also been working on our EU ERASMUS+ funded “PERISCOPE” project (http://eu-periscope.essca.fr/), which was launched in 2019 as a follow-up to Project PERFECT, which also counted a number of IPSERA participants. Project PERISCOPE aims to identify PSM skills and key competencies for innovation and sustainability and is undertaken by a consortium of five partner institutions: ESSCA, Copenhagen Business School, Graz University of Technology, the University of Twente and Audencia. During 2020 we held an online World-cafe and launched a Delphi study, which is still ongoing. These events are giving us great insights from senior purchasing professionals that represent multiple industries and we look forward to reporting the results from this work in due course.

Finally, our "Purchasing and Digital Innovation” chair, launched in 2019 in collaboration with French consulting company AXYS, has been busy working on exciting new projects related to purchasing digitalization. The chair engages many of our students as well as French companies in these projects. We held one event on Purchasing and Artificial Intelligence in Nantes in November – a physical event we managed in between lockdowns!

Audencia RICC coordinator Thomas Johnsen

Report from SIG "Education"

Wed, 03 Mar 2021 21:48:48 GMT

The IPSERA Education SIG was involved in the recent Educator's Workshop and coordinated a session on teaching and learning techniques and tools for engaging students in the online environment we find ourselves in. This involved some brief presentations from community members on what they have found useful over the last year and an open discussion on others experiences and thoughts. We are keen to build on these activities and support the IPSERA community through an increased sharing of experiences and will therefore be making use of the IPSERA members area as a place to store any relevant materials and if you have anything that you think others would find useful, please do email stephen.kelly@edgehill.ac.uk with details.

We would like to organise future SIG activities that are aligned to the needs of the community and therefore invite you to attend an open and informal meeting via Zoom on Friday the 5^th of March at 15:00 CET to discuss this in more depth. Please contact stephen.kelly@edgehill.ac.uk for the Zoom link and with any suggestions for discussion items.

Postdoctoral scholar opportunity at Ivey

Jenny Bäckstrand — Tue, 12 Jan 2021 14:44:27 GMT

The Ivey Business School (Western University, London, Canada) is seeking to fill a postdoctoral fellowship in Operations and Supply Chain Management, ideally with an interest in the Circular Economy.

The post-doctoral researcher will support the Circular Economy Lighthouse Project, which explores the operational, organizational and institutional factors influencing the integration of waste synergies into existing supply chains, and the implications for competitiveness and resilience.

Please read more here!

MASSC (Material Supply Strategy in a Crisis) Research

Fri, 18 Dec 2020 19:56:30 GMT

The provision of critical medical supplies such as mouth mask, respirators and tests became a critical part of the fight against the covid-19 outbreak. These medical supplies – normally routine purchases – became strategic purchases with the worldwide sharp increase in demand and supply chain disruptions as a result of the pandemic. Countries around the world used different supply strategies to obtain sufficient medical materials.

A team of researchers from research centre PPRC, the University of Twente, the Erasmus University Rotterdam, and the International Research Study on Public Procurement (IRSPP) research team obtained a ZonMw grant to study these Material Supply Strategies in the covid-19 Crisis. The first stage of the research focusses on studying the Dutch response on national, regional and organisational level. The second phase broadens the scope to include the supply strategies on a national level in at least 23 countries around the world. The aim of this research is to learn from an international comparison of the different strategies in the Covid-19 crisis.

The research project started in September 2020 and will last throughout 2021. While the results are expected early 2022, intermediate findings will be shared through online sessions.

The research team currently working on the Dutch analysis consists of longtime IPSERA community members Louise Knight (UT), Esmee Peters (PPRC, UT), Laura Bosman (PPRC, UT), Jan Telgen (PPRC, UT), Niels Uenk (PPRC, UT, UU), Annelie Oortwijn (EUR), Erik van Raaij (EUR), and Kees Ahaus (EUR).

For the international comparison we work together with the IRSPP research group Christine Harland, Jane Lynch, Andrea Patrucco, Tünde Tatrai, Petra Ferk, Louise Knight, Jan Telgen, Esmee Peters, and Niels Uenk

If you wish to be updated on the progress and findings of the MASSC research, please contact Laura Bosman (laura.bosman@pprc.eu), and check the newsfeed of www.pprc.eu. For questions concerning the setup of the research, feel free to contact Niels Uenk (niels.uenk@pprc.eu) as overall project leader of the MASSC project.

Inaugural workshop for Sustainability SIG

Fri, 18 Dec 2020 19:34:08 GMT

On Nov 30^th, we held the Workshop Sustainable Supply Chains Versus Covid 19, the opening event of not only the ‘Year of IPSERA’ but also the first activity for the newly formed IPSERA Sustainability Special Interest Group. We had almost 60 people attending an amazing array of presentations and discussions about solutions to ensure sustainable supply chains through this crisis and any crisis to come.

Nothing better than hearing from the speakers themselves:

Donna Marshall:

“In the procurement and supply chain world, we witnessed a natural social experiment in scenario planning, in risk mitigation and in crisis management. We saw some organisations reacting in a very blind knee-jerk way, forgetting they are part of a supply chain and focusing only on their own needs. Others were reacting as a community and pulling together to really help workers, suppliers and society. Some organisations and suppliers changed their entire business models in order to supply key protective equipment to frontline workers. It really was a tale of two supply chain reactions. Some of these reactions have led to calls for change in industries and for how we live, how we work and how we play. Some of the lessons from Covid-19 are here to stay. If we can learn these lessons, we can then shape a future that is more inclusive, more human and more sustainable”

Hakan Karaosman:

“Negative impacts have been exacerbated for lower-tier suppliers. Fashion supply chains need to become more connected. Fashion players must move from self-isolation toward multi-level partnerships”

Annachiara Longoni:

“Understanding how social impact supply chains function might be crucial to react after Covid-19 outbreaks. Tensions emerging between sustainability and resilience are becoming a pressing need”

Davide Luzzini:

“Let’s investigate social impact considering vulnerable people and focus on three response approaches: transform & adopt, collective action and system change”

Lucy McCarthy:

“The sustainability of our seafood supply chains is interlinked with our planetary health. Overfishing is widely acknowledged as the single greatest stress to marine wildlife and habitats. We really need to reach an agreement at the national and international levels on these issues”

Mellie Pullman:

“Prior to the pandemic 70% of seafood was sold to the non-home consumer, restaurants, catering and other institutions but now that market has disappeared which has caused many fishing organisations to go under as they did not have the ability to go online. One of the problems is that they have to offer a lot of variety and variety conflicts with good sourcing practices. They end up having a lot of different kinds of fish which means that they are delving into fish that are not sustainably sourced”

Thomas Udesen:

“One of the positive aspects emerging amidst and beyond Covid is collaboration. We saw what is possible when the industry, regulators and different players put their heads together and say we want to solve an issue. But we also saw some worst practices. Unfortunately, some procurement organisations were seen going 10-15 years back in time toward the mindset of ‘price first’. One of the possible ways to change this negative discourse is to bring together procurement practitioners around the world and have them engaged bottom up”

Oliver Hurrey:

“It is very important we get coordinated. There are far too many initiatives, platforms, groups, events and one of the challenges of trying to find progress for procurement on sustainability is that almost too much stuff going on as well as too little, arguably as well. It is time to clarify where you need to go and who you need to talk to tackle some of those challenges”

Stay tuned to interact with the Sustainability SIG future activities!

Triple SIG workshop on Digitalization

Fri, 18 Dec 2020 19:24:42 GMT

This Wednesday Dec 16^th we held the Digitalisation Workshop, a joint effort from the IoT SIG, the Purchasing Innovation SIG and the Supply Chain Finance SIG. During four hours, over 50 participants discussed the challenges of going digital in PSM and the impact of digitalisation across research at the three SIGs.

The event has blended the practitioner’s perspective, future thinking research questions, and fresh research from the community.

We have learned that technologies are not magic bullets, that people is key to carry out the transition, and that understanding how humans and machines will collaborate is a fundamental issue to be tackled. We have also learned the difference between quick-wins produced by automation and long-lasting strategic change driven by augmentation. And we have been provoked to reflect how we must change education to embed the digital trend in our teaching.

An amazing event that is only one of the many of THE YEAR of IPSERA… Stay tuned!

Leo Marques, IPSERA Network Manager

A dilemma game for research ethics training: now available as app

Fri, 18 Dec 2020 19:00:31 GMT

Some years ago, as part of a series of campus-wide initiatives at Erasmus University Rotterdam, we developed a dilemma game for research ethics training.

This game uses (stylized) real-life ethical dilemmas in research to let people discuss (in small groups) alternative courses of action and exchange arguments regarding the appropriateness of these alternatives.

The ‘serious gaming’ format is very suitable for making training sessions on research ethics highly interactive, and to let participants understand and apply codes of conduct.

At Dutch universities, this code is The Netherlands Code of Conduct for Research Integrity (https://www.vsnu.nl/files/documents/Netherlands%20Code%20of%20Conduct%20for%20Research%20Integrity%202018.pdf) but the dilemma game is sufficiently versatile to be used in relation to other codes as well. In fact, myself and many others, have often used the dilemma game in training sessions internationally.

Until recently, the game was only available as a physical card game or online PDF document.

In order to reach a wider audience and inspire continuous attention to the topic of research integrity, the Dilemma Game has now been digitalized as an app.

Other benefits of an app include that the game can be played individually as well, and that it is much easier to add new dilemmas to the game.

For more background and instructions, go to: https://www.eur.nl/en/about-eur/policy-and-regulations/integrity/research-integrity/dilemma-game

The app is available for iOS and Android.

Finn Wynstra

Message from our friends at IFPSM

Fri, 18 Dec 2020 18:00:22 GMT

Dear colleagues of IPSERA, dear friends,

the year 2020 has been very unusual to all of us. The outbreak and spread of the COVID-19 coronavirus have completely changed our way of working. Importantly, IFPSM member associations did not close their operations, instead we all had to adjust to a new situation. We shared our experiences with each other, we shared best practices, new ways of working and new ways how to manage our associations in the “new normal”.

Since Madam President of IFPSM, Mrs Marina Lindic took over the presidency of IFPSM, we have been strongly focusing on the support to our members, on new strategy preparation for the next 3 years and on renewal of the Constitution and Regulations. We adjusted our Mission and Vision to suit better to our members. Today IFPSM’s vision is to be the global, leading platform in purchasing and supply chain management, which serves the development of the profession and member organisations. We have been also able to activate IFPSM members in all Regions: America, Africa, Asia/Pacific and Europe. The global coverage of the IFPSM network is our greatest strength!

IFPSM has currently 45 full members; 3 affiliates, and 1 associate member. The core initiatives of IFPSM during the year have been:

The IFPSM Global standards (GS) new model and new promotional material (accessible here: IFPSM Global Standard 2020 A4_online.pdf)
New global Verification System for IFPSM certificates via a web
The new IFPSM strategy including Mission, Vision and updated Constitution and Regulations
The Sharing of the best practices of the members through regional round table sessions.

Due to Covid-19, we needed to switch all our meetings to virtual mode. Unfortunately, we also had to reschedule the IFPSM World Summit to take place on October 12th to 15th 2021. The location is Bali, Indonesia and the event will be organized in a hybrid mode (physical & virtual). The theme of the Summit is “Leading Transformation Through Disruptive Innovations”.

IFPSM also decided to start the building up of the new IFPSM e-Services web platform, to deliver the different services to the member association and to their individual members. The target is to launch this new service in June 2021 and the service will also include a global news channel, IFPSM News. Information about the IPSERA networks´ research studies would be most welcome!

I am looking forward to the continuous collaboration between IPSERA and IFPSM networks of professionals. Let the year 2021 be prosperous for all of us! And please stay healthy!

Markku Henttinen (CEO of IFPSM)

Making it happen in Rotterdam

Fri, 18 Dec 2020 17:39:20 GMT

Rotterdam is a large port city in The Netherlands, with a strong focus on trade, logistics, and financial services and is also one of the most ethnically diverse cities in the country. Rotterdam is home to Erasmus University Rotterdam, of which Rotterdam School of Management (RSM) is the business school. The largest department of the School is the department of Technology & Operations Management, of which the Supply Chain Management section is the largest section. Two chairs in Purchasing & Supply Management are located in this section: the chair of Finn Wynstra and the chair of Erik van Raaij.

Research and teaching in the area of Purchasing & Supply Management (PSM) is concentrated around these two chairs. Specific areas of research and teaching interest are purchasing and innovation, performance-based contracting, PSM in healthcare, capital construction contracting, digital transformation of purchasing, and purchasing ethics. The two chairs are also very active in teaching (empirical) research methods and research integrity.

At the moment, five PhD students are supervised on PSM topics, two part-time lecturers support the teaching of PSM-related courses at all levels ranging from BSc to MSc to Executive Education, and two researchers help carry out our research projects in the above areas.

As a group, the members of the RICC at Erasmus University Rotterdam, teach in six PSM-related courses at either RSM or Erasmus School of Health Policy and Management (ESHPM). The strongest presence is in the MSc program Supply Chain Management, where 120-150 students take the core course PSM, and about 50 students take the elective Strategic Sourcing and/or Healthcare Procurement and Value Chain Management. Each year about 20-25 of these students write their MSc thesis with one of the RICC members as coach. Another 30 MSc students from ESHPM take the elective Healthcare Procurement and Value Chain Management and 4-6 write their MSc thesis on this topic.

The RICC at Erasmus University Rotterdam has strong links to IPSERA, with Finn as former president, Erik as former organizer of the IPSERA doctoral workshop and former EB member, and all RICC members as regular participants at the IPSERA conference. The RICC also has strong links with the Journal of Purchasing and Supply Management, with Finn as former Editor-in-Chief, and Erik as one f the current Senior Associate Editors. A third strong link is with NEVI, the Dutch professional purchasing association, with both chairs having received or currently receiving financial support as well as support in kind from NEVI.

The RICC at Erasmus University Rotterdam aims to support expertise development in PSM in the region and beyond in a variety of other ways. Organizing the IPSERA doctoral workshop has already been mentioned, and the organization of the annual Dutch WION workshop has been in the hands of Finn (and has now been passed on to the RICC in Maastricht). Finn currently is in charge of organizing the annual IFPSM/NEVI/IPSERA PSM Summer School.

Report from SIG "Internet of things"

Fri, 18 Dec 2020 17:23:53 GMT

IoT is about curiosity, openness, and friendship

Back in 2017, IPSERA conference was in Hungary. We had our first SIG meeting and our first PDW on the internet of things. We felt that we needed to bring together members of the IPSERA community together. And the intent was nothing less than grandiose. It was expressed in a short opening we wrote and shared at that time “The Internet of thing (IOT) will bring a tectonic change in the structure of industries in the next 20 years. More disruptions and value chains reconfigurations must be anticipated. We have only seen the first sparks of a broad transformation. Many industry architectures will be significantly and sometime radically transformed”

And we claimed that we needed to study how “PSM functions will evolve on the forefront of such business-critical changes.”

In 2020 with the pandemic we kept our meeting virtual. It was great to see the faces of everyone smiling as we were joining our virtual sessions. It felt nice comforting and motivating to be altogether sharing news, interest, and research work.

Today the IPSERA IoT SIG might sound like a place where we talk about technology, but it is first and foremost an agora were curiosity, openness, and friendship blends together.

And …. We will meet again!

Michael Henke, Hervé Legenvre & Herbert Ruile

Report from SIG on "Purchasing and Innovation"

Wed, 04 Nov 2020 23:12:02 GMT

The IPSERA Special Interest Group (SIG) in Purchasing and Innovation was created in recognition of the growing interest amongst practitioners and researchers in how purchasing can contribute to the creation of innovations within organizations.

Just before the COVID-19 lock-down Florian Schupp organized an event at Schaeffler Automotive in Buehl (near Baden-Baden in Germany). This brought together a group of SIG researchers and a large group of participants from Schaeffler. The interplay between researchers and practitioners worked really well and it was great having not only Schaeffler procurement but also R&D participants taking part in the discussions. Thank you, Florian, for organizing this great event!

During the COVID-19 crisis the SIG has been unable to meet physically, but the group has still been active. The call for papers for the Special Topic Forum (STF) in Purchasing & Innovation in Journal of Purchasing & Supply Management (JPSM) was published and submissions received at the end of August. Manuscripts are currently undergoing review and we look forward to the outcome of this process.

The SIG in Purchasing & Innovation is now planning a joint PDW with the IPSERA SIGs ‘Supply Chain Finance’ and ‘Internet of Things’. On the initiative of the IPSERA board and facilitated by Leonardo, the joint event will be dedicated to digitalization in purchasing and discuss transversal themes across the SIGs. The date for this event has not yet been confirmed but it will most likely be in December so watch this space!

The SCM team of the Open University of the Netherlands

Wed, 04 Nov 2020 22:52:28 GMT

The SCM team of the Open Universiteit (SCM@ou.nl) has been a solid presence at many past IPSERA conferences. Typically, throughout the year, we help and motivate our best MSc students to turn their theses into IPSERA submissions, while encouraging them to present their work in person. During these challenging COVID times we were forced to turn virtual in everything we do.

The Open University of the Netherlands is a world leading organization in online education and research, with students from the Euregion. The yearly Dutch and Flemish student enrolment is around 15.000. The OU is one of the top universities in the Netherlands in official University Selection Guide with respect to its master programmes. The educational programmes in management and science rank highest in the country, with several having the predicate ‘topopleiding’ (top programme). The research is formulated within the program “Learning and Innovation in Resilient Systems” (LIRS). It focuses on multi-, inter-, and transdisciplinary aspects in the domains of sustainability, services and supply chain, social learning and learning regions.

The Supply Chain Management team (core members: Kees Gelderman, Paul Ghijsen, Harold Krikke, Wim Lambrechts, Jelle Mampaey, Kim Janssens, Jos Schijns, Janjaap Semeijn) at the OU is particularly dedicated to the following themes and areas: Public Procurement/Ethical and Sustainable Sourcing/Circular Business Models/Circular Purchasing/Performance Based Contracting/Procurement in Higher Education/Sustainable Supply Chain Management/Closed Loop Supply Chains.

Research output

Each year, we are supervising about 40 new thesis students in the areas of Supply Chain sustainability, purchasing management, public procurement, co-creation, circular purchasing and the like. Our popularity with the distance learning students (at bachelor and master level) at the OU keeps us busy during these challenging Covid-19 times. We regularly publish with our MSc graduates as well. We supervise PhD students who focus on sustainability, circularity and public procurement. This year, we witnessed the successful PhD defenses of Victor Verboeket (3D printing & Supply chain disruption) and Petra Neessen (Circular Purchasing). Rob Vluggen is making excellent progress towards the completion of his dissertation: Public sector procurement and sustainability development.

Publications this year appear in the Journal of Purchasing and Supply Management, Journal of Cleaner Production, Sustainability, British Food Journal, Journal of Public procurement, Behavioral Sciences, etc.

The Dutch Research Council (NWO) recently approved our proposal named CoLoSus (Compentences inLogistics & Sustainability). The project is granted within the Future of Work funding instrument, which is part of the NWO’s Human Capital program. The projectfocusses on innovations in learning communities in logistics and supply chain sector. We are now ready to engage two ambitious scholars in December 2020 (one PhD student and one Post Doc researcher) to explore required individual competences (related to sustainability, empowerment and resilience) for a future of sustainability in logistics and supply chains.

Conference contributions

The SCM team of the OU has been present at the pastIPSERA conferences, both with faculty members and master students presenting their work. Members of the team have been session chairs in the area of public procurement, buyer-supplier relationships, and sustainable supply chain management.

In 2020, A thematic session on “Aligning elements of circular business models” was prepared at the annual and virtual NBM Conference (chairs: Harold Krikke & Wim Lambrechts). The session included the following presentations:

The role of buyer-supplier relationship management as a means to enhance the implementation of circular business models;
Can circular touch points create customer values in healthcare?

We submitted 4 competitive papers to the IPSERA conference 2020, to be held in Knoxville. Although the conference was cancelled due to the Covid-19 crisis, two papers received a special award. The paper “Successful circular purchasing: about the purchasers’ role, behaver, drivers and constraints from an individual perspective” by Neessen et al. received the overall Best Paper Award. The paper “The impact of buying power on corporate sustainability - the mediating role of suppliers’ traceability information” by Van Hal et al. received the IFPSM Award for Paper with Strong Managerial Implications.

Our plans for the near future include a thematic session at the next LIRS Symposium (2021), covering topics of circular/sustainable/ethical purchasing.

CIPS-sponsored research on the "Future of Procurement"

Wed, 04 Nov 2020 22:19:44 GMT

In 2016, Professor Louise Knight and Dr Jo Meehan conducted a piece of research with the Chartered Institute of Procurement and Supply (CIPS) to explore how the future supply landscape might change, and what this might mean for purchasing and supply management (PSM), as a field, and for practitioners.

This was the first major academic study CIPS has commissioned on the future of the profession since 2003. The acceleration of a number of megatrends – for example, the climate emergency, artificial intelligence, robotics, and health and wealth inequalities formed the backdrop to the study. From the start of the study, the ambition was not to just come up with a list of issues, but to promote a rich, diverse, and critical conversation that brings academic and practitioners together. The research has led to two reports published by CIPS, and a Notes and Debates paper in the Journal of Purchasing and Supply Management (JPSM) on the potential of scenario methods to PSM futures research.

Jo and Louise adopted a method commonly used in strategy, natural sciences and engineering research, but not used in PSM - scenario development. Scenarios do not attempt to predict the future. The method allows participants to develop several plausible futures. Doing so helps reveal the often-hidden critical uncertainties that need attention. Rather than looking backwards at dominant themes/voices to linearly predict futures, scenarios encourage consideration of complex, interacting factors with an explicit recognition that the future is malleable and open to influence.

Working with CIPS has enabled an ongoing effort to disseminate the findings and use the findings in practice. The empirical research was conducted before Covid-19, yet the work remains a popular and influential resource for CIPS and its members. More than ever businesses are grappling with unprecedented uncertainty. The issues explored in the research’s contrasting scenarios – technology and supply markets – resonate with topics trending in the news today including the market power of big business and the role of regional business communities.

As stated in the JPSM paper (p.8), “Science is not limited to meticulously developing a better understanding of what is extant or has previously occurred. It is a fundamental function of science to imagine and engage with the unknown and what has not (yet) happened. Scenario planning is a valuable research technique to anticipate, shape and develop the future of PSM”. A good scenario is not about prediction – it should be thought provoking to seed rich debates. Sheena Donaldson, CIPS’s Knowledge Manager said: “The paper remains a core compass to our changing profession and is very much standing strong”.

What is supply market orientation and how firms can build it?

Wed, 04 Nov 2020 22:08:55 GMT

Supply market orientation: A dynamic capability of the purchasing and supply management function

Kai Foerstl, Anni-Kaisa Kähkönen, Constantin Blome & Matthias Goellner (2020). Supply market orientation: A dynamic capability of the purchasing and supply management function. Supply Chain Management: An International Journal, DOI 10.1108/SCM-06-2019-0233

Open access: https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/SCM-06-2019-0233/full/html

Capabilities to sense supply markets are now more important than ever due to the supply chain management challenges caused by the global pandemic. As the situation has evolved companies have been able to move from mere reaction to proactive strategies and, for example, to manage and mitigate risks. However, how to develop capabilities to tackle the market dynamism is the big question.

In our article, we conceptualize supply market orientation for the firm’s purchasing and supply management function. By studying large manufacturing and service firms in Germany, we show how supply market orientation capabilities are developed and how their application differs within and across firms. Our research can be used as a blueprint for the development of a supply market orientation capability that accommodates a firm’s unique contextual antecedents’ profile.

Firms can pursue their strategies more effectively through supply market orientation as they sharpen their strategic focus and can thus channel efforts and investments into the most relevant resources and practices at the function and category level. The degree of outsourcing, purchase complexity, supply base complexity, and supply market dynamism drive the emergence of supply market orientation, while the scope and focus may well differ within the same firm. For instance, depending on the purchase task (or category) firms may either focus on innovation sourcing, whereas in other categories the focus is rather on managing risks and attaining higher levels of supply base transparency.

Firms with more advanced supply market orientation also practice internal integration more effectively as they are enabled to integrate and reconfigure internal resources and teams to reflect the needs of the respective supply environment firms are dealing with. Thus, supply market orientation helps managers assess how much integration is justified in which supply environment. This is particularly valuable because internal and supplier integration consumes resources, poses risks, and requires investments in terms of money and time. Firms can have substantial benefit if they are actively generating and exploiting supply market intelligence instead of being reactive to customer market matters and internal stakeholder demands.

CfP Journal of Public Procurement - Special Issue

Jenny Bäckstrand — Thu, 10 Sep 2020 14:37:30 GMT

The Role of Public Procurement in Responding to the COVID-19 Pandemic

Submission deadline October 31st 2020 through https:/ /mc.manuscriptcentral.com/ jopproc

The special issue will cut across different areas of research relating to public procurement for health services including, but not limited to:

Public policy and procurement strategy (e.g. group purchasing and cross-border coordinated purchases)
Public-private partnerships
Vendor selection criteria
Use of PfI and PCP for the development of cures, apps and organizational innovations
Innovative initiatives, practices, procedures and organisation models of public procurement in the
health sector, including the procurement of medicinal products, medical devices and services
How to find alternative capacity and suppliers quickly under supply capacity constraints (i.e. so called reverse marketing approach in times of crisis)
How risk management needs to change in the future

The Special Issue welcomes empirical research built on either primary survey data or secondary data, and case studies providing examples of how to optimize public purchasing processes. We also welcome conceptual papers (e.g. critiques of existing theories/ frameworks which may not prove relevant/useful in times of crisis).

For the full call for paper Call for paper PDF

Crafting an Effective Review workshop

Jenny Bäckstrand — Fri, 04 Sep 2020 08:30:15 GMT

The editors of leading operations and supply chain journals have hosted a workshop entitled, “Crafting an Effective Review.”

You can view the workshop here; Recorded workshop

This workshop is designed for participants who are interested in becoming involved with a journal as a reviewer, as well as for experienced reviewers who would like to hone their reviewing skills. Topic covered include:

Why serve as a journal reviewer?
Ethical responsibilities of reviewers
Developmental reviewing
Plagiarism and other wrongdoings
Key questions to ask when doing a review
How to effectively structure a written review
Q&A

Participating editors include:

International Journal of Operations and Production Management
Constantin Blome
Rob Klassen

Journal of Business Logistics
Beth Davis-Sramek

Journal of Purchasing and Supply Management
Louise Knight
Wendy Tate

Incoming President - Donna Marshall

Jenny Bäckstrand — Wed, 02 Sep 2020 07:44:06 GMT

IPSERA Spirit Through Adversity

It is an honour to be the new President of our wonderful community. I began my membership of IPSERA in 1997, on the beautiful island of Ischia, and was ushered into a community that I had no idea I would still be part of 23 years later. I have come to realise how lucky I am to be part of such an incredible group of people. A group of people who are thoughtful, supportive, and extremely talented.

As we go through this uncertain time in our lives, I believe it is the IPSERA spirit, the bedrock of our association, that will help us to thrive. IPSERA is community that not only tolerates but celebrates diversity, openness and inclusion and allows people to truly be who they are and to bring all aspects of themselves to our community, which makes it vibrant, lively and great fun.

Michael, as well as our past Presidents, Helen, Veli-Matti, Dirk-Jan, Alessandro and beyond, as well as our IPSERA Executive Committee and Association Members have helped to foster a community that excels at cutting-edge, daring and insightful purchasing and supply research and education, while fostering the ideas of impact, practical application and engaging with our stakeholder communities.

Over the next year, we will be updating the strategy for IPSERA and we need the voice of our community to ensure that the strategy is community-driven and developed for the benefit of all. I would particularly welcome our Masters and PhD students, postdoctoral researchers, and faculty at the beginning of their careers, to get in touch and help us shape a community that benefits you and that you can be proud of.

For the first time in our history, our conference will be online. Times of immense upheaval are ripe for reflection, redesign and transformation. With your help and advice, we can create an online conference that truly helps us individually and as a community. Your ideas and advice are invaluable for making this happen.

Again, it is my absolute pleasure to be President of this association and I hope that together we can use the IPSERA spirit to make sure our community thrives.

Welcome to our new board member Hakan Karaosman

Jenny Bäckstrand — Wed, 02 Sep 2020 07:42:21 GMT

Hakan Karaosman is a sustainability management professional and award-winning researcher focusing on fashion supply chain sustainability. He began his career writing corporate reports on carbon footprint and social responsibility. He has been pursuing an academic career since 2013 and focuses on environmental and social justice in and across fashion supply chains. He has published a number of academic papers, book chapters, teaching cases and industrial reports.

He was the coordinator of the Manifesto: Unlocking Responsible Luxury, annual knowledge series published by Politecnico di Milano School of Management. He has also contributed to Forbes, The Guardian, Vogue Italia, Women’s Wear Daily, Fashion Revolution, Financial TimesxThe Next Web, Fashinnovation, Corriere della Sera and La Repubblica.

In February 2020, European Commission Research Executive Agency awarded Hakan with the prestigious Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowship award for the multi-stakeholder action research project, FReSCH (Fashion’s Responsible Supply Chain Hub) that he conducts with Prof. Donna Marshall at University College Dublin. He has served as a knowledge contributor for various multi-stakeholder actions, including State of Fashion 2018 - Searching for New Luxury, Sustainable Thinking Exhibit by Salvatore Ferragamo, Shaping a Sustainable Digital Future by PRADA, A New Awareness, andEnhancing Transparency and Traceability of Sustainable Value Chains in the Garment and Footwear Sector by UNECE. He holds BSc. in Environmental Engineering, MSc. in Management in Engineering of Energy and Environment and double degree Ph.D. in Industrial Management.

Hakan has been appointed as the Brand Management Director and will be responsible for developing and managing the brand strategy and value-adding activities for IPSERA. This branding strategy will be used to identify and further use the resources and capabilities within the IPSERA community.

‘I am humbled and honoured to be part of the IPSERA family. Not only has IPSERA been utilising robust and rigorous scientific research as an instrument to help overcome some of the profound mismatches between practical and academic languages, but it also forges a path to show how to embrace diversity, equality and inclusivity. I am thrilled to be working within the executive committee alongside with some very special people under the world-class leadership of Donna Marshall’, states Hakan.

Welcome to our new board member George Zsidisin

Jenny Bäckstrand — Wed, 02 Sep 2020 07:39:52 GMT

George A. Zsidisin, Ph.D. (Arizona State University), CPSM, is the John W. Barriger III Professor and Director of the Supply Chain Risk and Resilience Research (SCR3) Institute at the University of Missouri – St. Louis.Professor Zsidisin’s research focuses on how firms assess and manage risk associated with supply disruptions and price volatility in their supply chains.

He has published over 80 research and practitioner articles and seven books, including Supply Chain Risk: A Handbook on Assessment, Management and Performance; Managing Commodity Price Volatility: A Supply Chain Management Perspective; Handbook for Supply Chain Risk Management: Case Studies, Effective Practices, and Emerging Trends; and Revisiting Supply Chain Risk. His research on supply chain risk has been funded by the AT&T Foundation and IBM, and he has received numerous awards, such as from the Institute for Supply Management, Deutsche Post, Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals, and the Decision Sciences Institute. Further, he is one of the founding members of the International Supply Chain Risk Management (ISCRiM) network, teaches and leads discussions on supply chain management and risk with various Executive Education Programs and numerous companies in the U.S. and Europe, is co-Editor Emeritus of the Journal of Purchasing & Supply Management and serves on the Editorial Review Board for several academic supply chain journals.

Special Interest Group on Supply Chain Finance

Jenny Bäckstrand — Wed, 02 Sep 2020 07:35:51 GMT

Sorry to miss you this year!

As you know, the COVID-19 pandemic is hitting hard everywhere. We are sorry to miss our fellow colleagues at our yearly conference, but are eager to meet you again as soon as we can!

In the meantime, the topic of Supply Chain Finance (SCF) is becoming more relevant than ever. Liquidity scarcity and supply chain issues are exacerbated by the pandemic, and a solid integration between procurement, supply chain and financial strategies is becoming vital for many companies throughout the world.

We have not sit idle. Members of the SIG have been active in disseminating their knowledge, especially through practitioners (but we guess academic article won’t take much longer!). For example, our colleagues and SIG members Federico Caniato and Antonella Moretto have co-authored a piece on Harvard Business Review titled “A financial crisis is looming for smaller suppliers”.

Through the SCF Community (who co-manages the SIG) outlets we have provided practitioners with several pieces of information on SCF and COVID, including several articles and webinars including speeches by Michael Henke, Michiel Steeman and Viktor Elliot, all available for free on the SCF Briefing website.

Working hard on keeping in contact

In this uncertain environment accurate predictions have become critically difficult to make. Usually, the SIG meets in November, the day before the main SCF Community event, to present paper ideas and discuss what’s going on in the SCF area. This year, this will likely not be possible.

However, we are preparing to host the now-traditional SIG meeting in online form. Can’t promise anything right now, but you will hear from us!

Participation to the SIG, in whatever form, has always been and will remain free of charge this year as well. The SIG meeting is open to anyone interested in research implications or academic collaboration on SCF (in its broadest understanding).

If you are interested in joining the SIG meeting or, more in general, to remain in contact with us, please contact Luca Gelsomino (luca@scfcommunity.org).

The Special Interest Group on Supply Chain Finance

The SIG on Supply Chain Finance (SCF) is a group created in October 2017 and led by the SCF Community (www.scfcommunity.org) as part of the activities of the IPSERA network, in recognition of the growing interest amongst researchers (and practitioners) towards SCF and, more in general, the integration between finance and supply chain.

As the number of submissions to the IPSERA conference on the topic of SCF increases every year, researchers in this field feel the need to build a network that can strengthen relationship and foster academic collaboration.

The SIG, therefore, has three aims:(i) provide opportunities for discussion and reflection on research implication on the SCF topic, (ii) a platform to better define and organise SCF-related inputs and contributions within the IPSERA conference and (iii) foster collaboration opportunities (e.g. cross-university publications, friendly review, early stage exchange of ideas) between members.

Report from RICC EIPM

Jenny Bäckstrand — Wed, 02 Sep 2020 07:33:50 GMT

EIPM is a school dedicated to Purchasing & Supply Management (PSM). Our mission is to serve our clients by deploying knowledge in PSM to contribute to sustainable value creation for different stakeholders. With branches in Geneva and Shanghai and partnerships in Brazil, India, Mexico, North America, Poland and the United Arab Emirates, the Institute has developed a complete range of solutions to meet the training and development needs of its large base of international clients in all sectors of industry. EIPM is also operating the EIPM Peter Kraljic award that requires company to go through a demanding assessment process that include a validation visit by two trained assessors.

On the research side, EIPM is making continuous investment in and contribution to research. In 2020, we have been celebrating the 5^th anniversary of the EIPM Value Creation Observatory. Over the past years we have addressed a diversity of topics including Innovation, The internet of Things, Shared Value Creation or Open Hardware. Our research builds on our network of CPOs and Practitioners but also on academic collaborations that have involved other IPSERA members. As we believe in openness and collaboration, we also support IPSERA SIGs whenever possible.

While 2020 has led us to study the response of PSM organisation to the pandemic and the lockdowns; it is also the year we launch our new book “Fifth Generation Purchasing” that describe our vision for the profession. The changing business landscape calls for new ways of thinking and acting within purchasing. Purchasing organisations cannot focus purely on leveraging scale and power to optimise costs they also need to work in sync with both their stakeholders and external partners to deliver timely value. They need to harness pace and speed to obtain an advantage for the business and capture opportunities in the market at the right time. The book describes six work modes and offers a wealth of interviews and practical tools. We hope this will inspire further debates and research as temporal perspective deserves more study in the PSM research community.

For any questions, feel free to contact us. Hervé Legenvre will be glad to answer you hlegenvre@eipm.org

Update from the Editors-in-Chief, Journal of Purchasing and Supply Management

Jenny Bäckstrand — Wed, 02 Sep 2020 07:18:28 GMT

The world has certainly changed in the past few months! Throughout these changes, hopefully all of you are safe and healthy. We wanted to send a brief note to let you know that we are managing the increasing flow of manuscripts at JPSM and hope that you will consider your own submissions. With these very interesting times comes interesting research opportunities. Our journal impact factor was announced in June and has increased to 4.640 putting us in the middle of the pack with the top supply chain journals.

We highly value JPSM’s close relationship with IPSERA, which dates back to the two institutions’ founding. For us, it means that there is a close-knit community of scholars that contribute to the success of JPSM through authorship, engaged editorship and reviewing. We highly value this community and hope to continue our strong and engaged relationship.

We very much missed catching up with the IPSERA-JPSM community in Knoxville, and hope you, your family, friends and colleagues have been spared the suffering experienced by so many during the ongoing pandemic. Had we met in Knoxville, we would have had the pleasure of announcing this year’s JPSM awards at the conference dinner on Monday night at Jackson Terminal. The night would have included line dancing, “real” east Tennessee cooking, and a moonshine tasting!

We also missed the JPSM annual meeting, traditionally held immediately before the conference opens. Here are a few facts and figures from the annual report we would have presented. Since 2016, the metrics are quite stable. The number of submissions remains just short of 300 per year, though for 2020 we already have 265, suggesting academics are catching up on their writing while in lockdown. Desk reject rates rose to 72%. At 40 weeks, the average time from submission to final editorial outcome in 2019 is much the same at in 2018 and 2017. This is higher than we would like ideally, but reflects the considerable effort by authors, reviewers and handling editors to develop submissions, often over several rounds - high added-value but not quick to deliver!

Having risen steadily, JPSM’s ISI Impact Factor dipped for 2018, and then risen again significantly for 2019. This is pleasing, but not a primary focus. We continue to aim towards:

a steady increase in the quality of articles (significance, originality, rigour)
alongside empirical articles, publishing a range of other articles which, for example, make conceptual contributions or develop research agenda
publishing articles which ‘push boundaries’, through novel topics or methodologies, through interdisciplinary research etc

The world of academic publishing is undergoing a huge transformation affecting all journals, driven in part by technology and in part by changing policy among governments, HE institutions and research agencies. Our decisions to accept papers are not constrained by article or page budgets. We can accept as many (or few) as the editorial team agree, and these are now published online as soon as the proofs are corrected. Articles are now numbered (rather than labelled with volume + issue + page numbers), and where appropriate collated into ‘virtual special issues’ (VSI) available via ‘Article Collections’ [https://www.sciencedirect.com/journal/journal-of-purchasing-and-supply-management/special-issues].

One area that we know is causing some confusion is open access and fees to publish. JPSM authors have never had to pay, and still don’t. For most papers we publish, full text access is restricted to readers with subscription access to JPSM. Authors can however choose to pay a fee when their paper is accepted, and then the full text of the article is available without charge via the JPSM website. [https://www.elsevier.com/journals/journal-of-purchasing-and-supply-management/1478-4092/open-access-options]. Open Access, Plan S etc. will drive further change in the sector, some of which will no doubt affect JPSM – we will keep you posted!

Our first VSI was published recently, to mark JPSM’s 25^th anniversary. It provides a great mix of articles, some looking back, others looking to future, some empirical and others focused on theory, method or pedagogy. The editorial and all the articles can be accessed here [https://www.sciencedirect.com/journal/journal-of-purchasing-and-supply-management/special-issue/100LPLQLBQJ] directly, without subscription (till April 2021). For an overview of the various articles see pages 1 to 4 of the editorial. Do take a look!

In the latter part of the editorial, we reflect on JPSM progress and our plans for its future development. In our view, the PSM academic community has developed the scope and quality of its research and teaching enormously in the last 25 years. Now we need to take this still further, and do so faster than before. We need to broaden the portfolio of topics and methods in use, to strengthen the impact and influence of PSM research and pedagogy. We need to contribute effectively to addressing grand challenges and developing new ways of doing business. In the editorial, we wrote of ‘business-not-as-usual’, having in mind in particular climate change. Since then, of course, we now face the covid-19 pandemic, which gives even greater import and urgency to developments within our field. We aim to support and guide this development by continuing to encourage ‘boundary pushing’ research.

We look forward to receiving many submissions in the year to come, whether more traditional or innovative, and either for our regular issues or in response to one of our open calls on PSM & innovation, or on learning from the pandemic [Call for Papers: Purchasing and Supply Management learning from the pandemic: transforming for better crisis management]

Best wishes --

Louise Knight and Wendy Tate --
Co-Editors-in-Chief and members of the JPSM editorial team

https://www.journals.elsevier.com/journal-of-purchasing-and-supply-management/editorial-board

Invitation to workshop - Crafting an Effective Review

Jenny Bäckstrand — Tue, 18 Aug 2020 15:03:02 GMT

Please join the editors of leading operations and supply chain journals as they host a workshop entitled, “Crafting an Effective Review.” This workshop is designed for participants who are interested in becoming involved with a journal as a reviewer, as well as for experienced reviewers who would like to hone their reviewing skills. Topic that will be covered include:

Why serve as a journal reviewer?
Ethical responsibilities of reviewers
Developmental reviewing
Plagiarism and other wrongdoings
Key questions to ask when doing a review
How to effectively structure a written review
Q&A

This workshop will take place on Thursday, August 20 at 9:00 am EDT (15:00 CET). There is no charge, and pre-registration is not required. You can join the workshop by clicking on the following Zoom link: https://iu.zoom.us/j/98329791422?pwd=b05SbFp6ZzByUkdPVlN2RDl4ZTdlUT09.

If asked for a password, please use ‘review.’ Please make sure that you save this information on your calendar if you would like to participate in the workshop.

Participating editors include:

International Journal of Operations and Production Management
Constantin Blome
Rob Klassen

Journal of Business Logistics
Beth Davis-Sramek

Journal of Purchasing and Supply Management
Louise Knight
Wendy Tate

Journal of Supply Chain Management
Barbara Flynn

If you have any questions or would like further information about the workshop, please contact Barb Flynn (bbflynn@indiana.edu).

Supply Chain Management Position at Michigan State University

Jenny Bäckstrand — Mon, 03 Aug 2020 11:42:39 GMT

Michigan State University’s Eli Broad College of Business, Department of Supply Chain Management, has an opening for a tenure system assistant professor to start in the 2021-2022 academic year. The department will consider all candidates with expertise in any of the three primary supply chain areas i.e., logistics/transportation, operations, sourcing. Depending on the candidate’s qualifications and fit, the individual will be housed in one of these areas. As part of the application packet, candidates should include a cover letter that clearly indicates the specific supply chain area that they wish to be considered for. While expertise in multiple areas, and their interaction, would be an asset, please choose only one area of primary focus in the application.

Duties include research, teaching, and service. All candidates must have the ability to teach at the undergraduate and MBA levels and a demonstrated record (or potential) of research excellence in supply chain management. Salary and terms are negotiable depending on experience. The position requires a Ph.D. or equivalent degree from an accredited university.

Specific expertise that MSU is seeking in the three areas include, but are not limited, to the following:

Logistics/transportation: contemporary logistics managerial decision-making, strategic warehousing/distribution management, last mile logistics fulfillment, maritime and port logistics management, logistics strategy
Operations: process improvement & design; innovation & new product development; emerging technology management; sustainability; service operations in contexts such as healthcare, retail; humanitarian operations; behavioral operations
Purchasing/procurement/sourcing: supply chain risk management, supply networks, leveraging supplier capabilities, buyer-supplier relationships, green procurement, electronic sourcing

For all three areas, candidates with business analytics among their research methods expertise will be given priority.

Review of applications will begin August 12, 2020 and continue until the position is filled. Applications must be submitted online at: http://careers.msu.edu. Refer to posting #663149.

For additional information, please contact Dr. Yemisi Bolumole (bolumole@msu.edu) or Dr. Tobias Schoenherr (schoen48@msu.edu), Search Committee Co-Chairs.

More information on the SCM Department is available at https://broad.msu.edu/supply-chain-management/ MSU is an affirmative-action, equal-opportunity employer committed to achieving excellence through cultural diversity. The university actively encourages applications/nominations of women, persons of color, veterans, and persons with disabilities.

Outgoing President

Jenny Bäckstrand — Tue, 30 Jun 2020 06:51:27 GMT

Dear IPSERA friends and family,

Now my IPSERA presidency is over, three wonderful years have come to an end. My last official appearance was at the end of May in the virtual AGM, where - due to the Corona pandemic a bit different than usual - I passed the baton on to Donna, a certainly excellent new president! Donna gave a great farewell speech with voices from the Committee, which I really enjoyed and which I will look back on from time to time in the future.

Long before that I was already a member of the Executive Committee. I have always wished to bring IPSERA to Dortmund and in 2016 we organised the IPSERA Annual Conference here, part of the programme took also place in the stadium of Borussia Dortmund J One year later, in 2017, I became President and was able to lead through the conferences in Hungary, Athens and Milan. All in all I gained a lot of amazing experiences and learned a lot at IPSERA. I have also made many new friends. It was an honour and a pleasure for me to give IPSERA back a little bit of what I got from this unique network. It was fun with you, colleagues!

I will not withdraw completely, I will remain active. I hope to see you again in person in Knoxville next year at the latest.

Yours, Michael.

Report from RICC Maastricht University

Jenny Bäckstrand — Tue, 30 Jun 2020 06:50:05 GMT

Dear IPSERA friends,

For many reasons, 2020 will be remembered as a special year. COVID-19 confronted us with unique challenges, both in our personal and professional lives. It made us realize that despite all the progress we have made in science, the world is still not malleable. Never before we had to cancel an IPSERA conference…, it was a wise and brave decision that was made by the organizing committee in the uncertain early days of the pandemic. On the upside, however, never before did so many world leaders spoke about purchasing and supply chain management. The spotlight is on our profession! Many organizations are reconsidering their global supply chains, and/or developing new (local!) sourcing strategies for key spend categories. Most likely, academics will be contacted to provide evidence and/or inspiration for these new strategies. If not, make yourself heard!

Half of the RICC team (and RICC dog) discussing bottleneck sourcing of face-masks during COVID-19 - With at least the prescribed 1,5 distance

Since March 2019, we are a Regional IPSERA Center of Competence (RICC) and we are very happy that we invested in developing our team just before the pandemic. Our PSCM team almost doubled in size!

Beginning of RICC team - today the group is double the size!

We launched our Brightlands Institute for Supply Chain Innovation (BISCI) which is aimed at stimulating digital and sustainable supply chain innovations in our region. We couldn’t be more happy to have recruited Professor Bart Vos (former Tilburg University and winner of IPSERA 2020 Best Paper Award) and Ton Geurts (former CPO of Bekaert, DSM and AkzoNobel) as our BISCI leaders.

Snapshots from the BISCI opening at the Villaflora in Venlo, NL

Something else that we are proud of is that we were invited by Professor Finn Wynstra (RSM Erasmus University) to take over the organization of WION. This annual 2-day ‘mini IPSERA conference’ (>40 participants in 2020) brings together PSM academics that are working for BeNeLux Universities and/or Universities of Applied Sciences.

Taking over the chairing of the annual WION meeting in Lunteren, NL

In 2019, we contributed to the IPSERA community in many ways (e.g. serving on the executive board, participating in the SIG ‘Purchasing and Product Innovation’, acting as financial auditor, serving on the conference scientific committee, and more). Next to all of the above, we conducted our research and (digitally) delivered our educational programs. Our bread and butter.

What’s on our agenda for 2021? With the RICC it is our ambition to build and sustain a regional PSCM practitioner and academic community with an interest in digitalization, sustainability and innovation. BISCI will start up several new projects with public and private organizations to stimulate innovation in logistics and SCM. Further, we will start up new PhD research (e.g. Digital Procurement) and contribute to IPSERA where we can (e.g. host a SIG meeting).

But, let’s not forget our students! The spotlight is on PSM and students might be attracted by the promising career opportunities. Therefore, we decided to fully redesign our Supply Chain Management Master program in Maastricht, with new courses and content. It will keep us busy in 2020 and beyond!

Robert Suurmond and Bart Vos (Program leaders) working hard on revamping the SCM M.SC. programs

Let’s all meet in Knoxville at the 2021 IPSERA Conference and make 2021 a year to remember as well. In the meanwhile, stay healthy!

With kind regards, on behalf of Bart, Diogo, Janjaap, Kars, Kris, Lieven, Max, Nadine, Robert, Simon, Tom and Ton,

Frank Rozemeijer

RICC Coordinator
NEVI Professor Purchasing and SCM
Maastricht University

Nevi Next: procurement to the next level for individuals, organisations and society

Jenny Bäckstrand — Tue, 30 Jun 2020 06:48:28 GMT

For more than 25 years now, Nevi has been supporting scientific education and research in the field of procurement, coordinated by the Nevi Research Committee (NRC). Our joint mission is to raise the procurement profession to the next level for the benefit of society, organisations and individuals. We focus principally on four sectors: the public sector/government, the healthcare sector, industry and the service sector, within which our social themes for the coming period are affordable healthcare, professional commissioning, socially responsible procurement, and future procurement.

Stimulate research and education
We approach the development of our procurement profession from a scientific angle, and for this reason we invest in scientific education and research, academic chairs and doctoral research. Since 1956 Nevi has financed a total of 11 professors, of which Arjan van Weele (Eindhoven University of Technology) was the first. Other former professors: Jan Telgen (Twente University), Jacques Reijniers (Nijenrode University), Sicco Santema (TU Delft), Bart Vos (Tilburg University), Dirk Jan Kamann (Groningen University), Finn Wynstra (Rotterdam University) and Jeroen Harink (UvA). Over the past 30 years, this funding has resulted in about 30 PhD students At the moment, we are involved in funding professorships and PhD candidates at four Dutch universities: Wendy van der Valk (Tilburg University), Fredo Schotanus (Universiteit Utrecht), Frank Rozemeijer (Maastricht University) en Erik van Raaij (Rotterdam University). . Fredo Schotanus and Wendy van der Valk are new in this list. We translate the results of the various studies and the knowledge obtained into applicable theory for procurement professionals and organisations to use in practice.

When allocating funding for PhD research, NRC is guided by Nevi’s social themes, the four sectors mentioned above, and the Nevi Knowledge Roadmap.

Knowledge Roadmap
The Nevi Knowledge Roadmap encompasses four ‘worlds’ based around two axes. The horizontal axis has to do with the future value chain for organisations. Decisions that organisations make in choosing suppliers have a direct impact on matters such as sustainability (Socially Responsible Procurement (MVI)), innovative capacity, risk management, customer friendliness, costs, etc. There is therefore great responsibility and strategic importance involved in organising this well throughout the entire organisation and between organisations (suppliers and chains of suppliers).

The vertical axis concerns the role of procurement and supply management within an organisation. The way in which procurement and supply management are organised will increasingly be determined in a situation-specific manner and will no longer be the role of the procurement department alone (for example, the social domain).

By elaborating upon the four worlds: (1) Buying for better business & world, (2) Smart Supply Chains, (3) Value Chain Innovation & Co-creation, and (4) A New Society/ Economy, we provide insights into and inspiration for the future for both research and practice.

Trends external to procurement
Which external trends do we need to take into account? The change to “Society 3.0” is already underway and we are all already experiencing it on multiple fronts when it comes to digital and communication revolution, globalisation, innovation, changes in standards and values and the new economy. Tomorrow’s successful organisations embrace the changes and assume that today’s world (truth) is no longer tomorrow’s world (VUCA world). They have their sights fixed on their goals and know how to achieve them with the right expertise, information and people. When translated to procurement, this means that agile procurement and other organisations and supply chains will become increasingly important through collaboration and partnerships.

Worlds for procurement and supply chain management
The world of procurement and supply management will therefore need to evolve too. Suppliers play a critical role in this because this flexibility has to be realised together with them through means such as undertaking successful collaborative relationships. In this respect, the capacity of organisations to realise flexible supply chains is an important and strategic success factor for organisations. This is a challenge that we will be tackling in the coming years through scientific research directed towards the practices of organisations and procurement professionals.

IPSERA community
Nevi professors are always present at the IPSERA conference and they consider these meetings very valuable, interesting and inspiring. Check the contribution of Dutch research in the list of IPSERA Best paper awards. Not only Nevi professors attend IPSERA, we also attend the IPSERA Conference to gain inspiration for new purchasing themes.

If you would like to know more about our activities or the Nevi Research Committee, please feel free to contact Erik van Assen, e.vanassen@nevi.nl

The Supply Chain Risk and Resilience Special Interest Group

Jenny Bäckstrand — Tue, 30 Jun 2020 06:38:28 GMT

Supply chain risk and resilience has become a significant concern in business and a core area of research in academe. The purpose of the Supply Chain Risk and Resilience Special Interest Group (SIG) is to share knowledge throughout the IPSERA community on identifying, assessing, and managing supply (chain) risk and ensuring supply chain resilience, using operational, financial and supply chain approaches. The SIG was initially formed in November, 2019 by George Zsidisin, Michael Henke, Christine Harland, Federico Caniato, Jukka Hallikas, Veli-Matti Virolainen, Barbara Gaudenzi, and Roberta Pellegrino.

The COVID-19 pandemic is illustrating many examples of how firms are able to address one of the most significant challenges in supply chain management at a global level. In tandem, a plethora of research ideas and programs are beginning to emerge for better understanding how organizations and supply chains operate and maintain resilience from this historic catastrophe. Several of these projects are being conducted by current members of the Supply Chain Risk and Resilience SIG. Professor Christine Harland is working on the role of public procurement in resilience in crises and also an action agenda for post-COVID-19 supply chain management. Professor George Zsidisin recently moderated a panel session on how Missouri companies are managing risk due to COVID-19 https://youtu.be/1kDRQiWn_aE; https://youtu.be/5dOuP-sEgxQ. Others research programs by members of the Supply Chain Risk and Resilience SIG are just starting to form.

Although we are saddened we were not able to meet this past April at the IPSERA conference, we do look forward to seeing you in Knoxville in 2021, and will keep the IPSERA community informed of upcoming Supply Chain Risk and Resilience SIG activities.

Associate or Full Professor and Director of Centre for Building Sustainable Value at Ivey Business School

Jenny Bäckstrand — Mon, 22 Jun 2020 10:53:38 GMT

Nominations and applications are invited for the position of Director of the Centre for Building Sustainable Value at the Ivey Business School at The University of Western Ontario. The Director will be appointed as a regular faculty member at the Associate or Full Professor level with tenure. An appointment as Director will normally be for a three-year term, renewable. The ideal candidate will have a PhD in management, business or a related social science discipline, will have published in the highest quality academic outlets and is a recognized expert in sustainability research, widely defined. The preferred candidate is also a team-builder, appreciates interdisciplinary research, has excellent communication skills, can be a change agent, and is a decisive leader. Although not necessary, some administrative experience would also be asset. The position is available to begin on January 1, 2021, although alternate start dates may be arranged.

or on this PDF; Ivey_Sustainability_Director_Faculty Job Ad.pdf

PhD Summer Webinar Weeks

Jenny Bäckstrand — Sat, 23 May 2020 13:54:21 GMT

Within the next five years there will be billions of things represented by digital twins. These representatives of the physical world will lead to new possibilities for collaboration between experts of the physical world and data scientists. Digital twins are strong thought leaders who drive innovation and performance. Digital Twin technology helps companies improve the customer experience through a better understanding of customer needs, develop improvements to existing products, processes and services and can even help drive innovation in new business models.

That's why we are focusing on this topic in this year's PhD SUMMER Webinar Weeks.

The Graduate School of Logistics is offering PhD SUMMER Webinar Weeks from June 15 to 26, 2020. Free webinars and digital lectures by top-class, international scientists are on the agenda. Not only PhD students are addressed, also company representatives, post-docs, students or general interested parties are invited to register for the program or individual elements. The offerings are part of the Digital Transfer Weeks of the Digital Innovation Hub (DIH) Dortmund.

Participation in the individual webinars is free of charge, but we ask for a binding registration.

Join us!

www.gsoflog.de

(https://gsoflog.lfo.tu-dortmund.de/phd-summer-webinar-weeks/)

A revolution in teaching and learning?

Jenny Bäckstrand — Mon, 27 Apr 2020 13:10:47 GMT

The rapid closure of campuses around the globe has compelled faculty into major redesign of their students’ learning experiences. In this article I (Simon Croom) want to share some reflections and offer some suggestions for faculty on responding to this revolution.

Our conversations have suddenly been filled with previously arcane terms like Zoom, Blackboard, Canvas, Screencast-O-Matic. Academic life led at arm’s length (or screen length) is the new norm. ‘Teleteaching’ is a way of life, potentially for some months yet, possibly presaging a new world of learning for many years ahead. This is a tectonic shift for the education world, and even faculty with extensive online mediated learning experiences face considerable challenges in transforming students’ experiences, often midway through the academic term or semester.

But not everything has changed.

Firstly, it is important to realize that there are fundamental, underlying similarities between the online and in-person curricular design. Both require clear definition of the aims and learning objectives; both are formatted around ‘chunking’ or structuring learning (week by week or module by module, for example); assignments remain focused on either formative direction or summative assessment; a range of materials are provided (textbooks, videos, PowerPoints, case studies etc.); faculty impart their wisdom through instructional presentations. In both environments, students participate in structured reviews, problems discussions, cases, simulations, presentations, group work, break out activities, field work, reflections and so on.

What has changed is the role played by technology in sustaining these activities. Regular synchronous Zoom lectures can often be far more interactive than the traditional lecture – we at least have every student’s name in front of us and can poll for regular feedback. Asynchronous lectures, whether video recorded, narrated PowerPoint, TedTalk, YouTube or other open source, enable faculty to flip the classroom, monitor student engagement, and provide clear discussion and group review activities. Field work can be undertaken virtually through selective use of simulations, datasets, movies and so forth. Surveys can be conducted (in fact response rates may increase due to respondents being at home!)

So, the question is, what are the primary challenges in the online only world? I believe there are two important areas to consider.

First, it is apparent that motivation and time management for both faculty and students is a major challenge in the online world. Students confined to self-isolate are restless, disorganized and searching for structure to their day, week and semester. Faculty, similarly, face these challenges. The learning environment is thus the single biggest change we all face. In the classroom, we focus on imparting learning within the social order with clearly defined norms for each class. For example, while I am happy for students to use laptops, some colleagues ban them. While I require students to take structured lecture notes, other faculty issue workbooks, and yet others have no such stipulation. I have small size classes (<40), you may have well over 100 in your sections. Classrooms are formal environments, with desks, chairs, screens, podium and are within an academic building. The new online environment is shared by students with their children, partners, roommates, even public area Wi-Fi. This is not a trivial issue. Research has found that lighting, air quality, décor, comfort, temperature are all critical decisions to incorporate in designing buildings for effective learning. When designing your courses, you must be mindful of the student environment.

So, what can you do? Survey your students. Get a view of their time zone, technology, internet access, personal living situation and their anxieties and concerns. As a result of my class surveys, I limited synchronous class time to short bursts of content delivery (max 10-minute presentation by me), and focused instead on asynchronous use of chat rooms, discussion boards, reflective writing and teamwork. (I have 1/3 of my class in a different time zone now)

Second, online mediated learning requires a clear student journey map. In this respect I started with the learning objectives for each course. Checked off the ‘content’ topics to be addressed and provided alternative media for each main topic. For example, total cost of ownership was addressed through a preassigned YouTube vide of 6 minutes duration, a single discussion post, a short Zoom (synchronous) presentation and breakout groups for students to discuss questions. I also require students to use their project team as their social network – they used WhatsApp, Slack, Google Hangouts and other social media to check in and share their project work. Finally, I kept the same assessment schedule as my pre-virus syllabus. I do not use exams or tests, so that did not pose a challenge, but if you do, one proposal I would make is to consider either short answer tests allowing students to complete asynchronously or replace exams with a report of written activity. A final note – I have used learning journals with great success and during the pandemic these have been central to the students’ success. I review every 4 weeks and guide the students to develop a rich repository of materials to which they add reflective comments.

A brave New World may await. This is a good time to reflect on our pedagogy and learning philosophies even while we are grappling with Zoom and Blackboard!

If you wish to learn more about any of these topics, and to explore some videos and resources related to learning, I have curated a collection at my blog www.simoncroom.com Feel free to email me too! scroom@sandiego.edu

2nd meeting of IPSERA SIG on Purchasing and Innovation

Jenny Bäckstrand — Thu, 27 Feb 2020 12:30:00 GMT

The IPSERA special interest group on "Purchasing and Innovation" has gathered for the second time after its initiation at the 2018 IPSERA conference in Budapest. This time the group was invited by its member Dr. Florian Schupp, vice president purchasing automotive and aftermarket, to the Schaeffler site in Bühl (Germany) on February 17 and 18. The group gathered for an informal dinner at Burg Windeck on Monday evening and had a 3-hour tour through the production facilities in Bühl where Schaeffler. Afterwards, about 40 of Schaeffler's purchasing and R&D managers joined the presentations of Thomas Johnsen ("An overview of recent research on purchasing involvement in product development & innovation"), Richard Calvi ("Innovation Scouting: A new challenge for Purchasing")

Nadine Kiratli ("The impact of perceptual differences of governance on team creativity during co-innovation projects")

Holger Schiele ("Evaluating startups as partners for innovation" )

Robert Suurmond ("Interface between startups and incumbent suppliers").

The SIG members enjoyed the constructive, value-adding and inspiring discussions with Schaeffler employees. During the SIG meeting, the upcoming Special Topic Forum (STF) on "Purchasing and Innovation" in the Journal of Purchasing and Supply Management was announced. The guest editor team around Thomas Johnsen is complemented by Marie-Anne Le Dain (Grenoble INP), Nadine Kiratli (Maastricht University) and Holger Schiele (university of Twente).

The SIG would like to thank Florian and Schaeffler for hosting us and would also like to express its gratitude towards IPSERA for sponsoring the event.

In case you are interested to join the SIG, please contact Thomas Johnsen or Marie-Anne Le Dain.

Report from WION 2020

Jenny Bäckstrand — Mon, 27 Jan 2020 10:59:19 GMT

On 21-22 January, some 40 researchers and educators gathered in Lunteren (NL) for the 17^th edition of the WION seminar (‘Workshop Inkoop Onderzoek Nederland’). Initiated in 2004, by Arjan van Weele and his colleagues from Eindhoven, this seminar brings together PhD students, teachers, professors – be it fulltime or part-time – in the area of Purchasing and Supply Management, from the Netherlands.

The program format is quite unique, with some plenary presentations and multiple paper review sessions. The plenary sessions typically feature a practitioner and an academic, but from another discipline.

This year Jan Roodenburg, former SVP Supplier Development, Philips and VP SC & Ops, HP EMEA, spoke about sustainable supply chains – reminding us that sustainability efforts have been going on for quite some time already, but that is quite challenging to keep this consistently on the agenda of senior management.

Kees Ahaus, professor of Health Services Management & Organisation at the Erasmus School of Health Policy & Management, presented research on how different institutional logics interact in the organization of care supply chains, such as in the case of COPD patients.

In the paper review sessions, two reviewers are assigned to each paper, and each session lasts for 60 mins. This duration and the small group setting (in parallel sessions) mean that the discussions can be quite extensive and detailed.

Finally, each WION edition features workshops and group discussion on techniques and methods, and this year we focused on teaching – more specifically, problem-based learning. Frank Rozemeijer, Nadine Kiratli and Robert Suurmond from Maastricht University led an interactive and productive session exploring techniques for online learning and bring real-life problems into the classroom.

Finn Wynstra chaired WION for the last six years on behalf of the Rotterdam team, but as of 2021, the team from Maastricht will take over the baton.

IFPSM/IPSERA Summer school

Jenny Bäckstrand — Fri, 17 Jan 2020 10:57:39 GMT

The registration for the IFPSM/IPSERA Summer school is now open!

This years theme is "Theories for Purchasing and Supply Management Research".

More information and a link to the registration form is found here: https://www.erim.eur.nl/doctoral-programme/courses/detail/3574/

Invitation for AOM attendees 2019 - August 11th 12:30-3:00

Jenny Bäckstrand — Wed, 26 Jun 2019 15:56:43 GMT

Please join us for a lively discussion on the identity of the purchasing function at the AoM conference in Boston on August 11^th2019, 12:30-3:00, Westin Hotel, Empire Room.

Purchasing is truly one of the world’s oldest professions, but it continues to remain relatively small as a discipline. This workshopis an opportunity to bring purchasing and supply management (P&SM) researchers from all over the world together to discuss the future of purchasing in academia, and perhaps chart a future course for shaping the discipline. This will build on topics from the International Purchasing Supply Education and Research Association (IPSERA) session “Identity and the Future of P&SM (Milan, April 2019). All P&SM researchers are welcome whether they participated in the session or not. This workshop will create a venue for meeting other researchers in P&SM, and provide a forum to discuss topics such as:

Is P&SM an academic discipline?
Should P&SM seek to more formally become an academic discipline?What are the associated risks and rewards?
Should P&SM build its own theories?
Is P&SM a subset of OM, SCM or another discipline?
Where do we go from here?
What are some interesting research problems that are specific for the future P&SM?
What are some ways that we can build a stronger P&SM community?

We look forward to a lively discussion in this workshopthat will help re-energize the PSM community. The P&SM North American Research Symposium (NARS) lost its sponsorship and the community lost a key venue for discussions like the ones mentioned above. The goal is to engage in discussions that involve scholars from across the globe.

Share this with others in your network that are interested in PSM that are attending the Academy of Management Annual Meeting.

//Lisa Ellram, Wendy Tate, Stephan Wagner, Craig Carter

IPSERA SIG "Supply Chain Finance"

Jenny Bäckstrand — Mon, 01 Oct 2018 12:13:09 GMT

The Supply Chain Finance SIG is organizing a workshop on November 28th in Amsterdam.
The purpose of the SIG meeting is to strengthen the links within the academic community around the topic of Supply Chain Finance (SCF) and financial management in the supply chain, with a keen eye on new and innovative technologies. Read more here

CfP for SI on the Impact of Industry 4.0 on Operations and Supply Chain Management

Jenny Bäckstrand — Thu, 27 Sep 2018 14:18:08 GMT

IJOPM has recently published the call for papers of a special issue on the impact of Industry 4.0 on Operations and Supply Chain Management - link.
Guest edited by Prof. Lenny Koh, Prof. Fu Jia, and Dr. Guido Orzes.

Deadline 31/12-2018

IPSERA SIG "Purchasing & Innovation"

Jenny Bäckstrand — Mon, 17 Sep 2018 06:12:13 GMT

Two events will be organized within the IPSERA SIG "Purchasing & Innovation" based on the concept of a dinner on the afternoon of day 1 and meeting on day 2

- Autumn event in Grenoble at Grenoble INP on 23-24 October 2018

- Winter event in in Buehl/Baden-Baden on 11-12 February 2019

For more information please, contact Thomas Erik Johnsen or Marie-Anne Le Dain

thomaserik.johnsen@polimi.it / marie-anne.le-dain@grenoble-inp.fr

Engaging to solve the grand challenge of sustainability: Interdisciplinary workshop on participatory and engaged research – Nottingham 15th and 16th February 2018

Erik van Raaij — Sun, 24 Dec 2017 12:48:17 GMT

We are organising a workshop structured around two distinct days in February 2018. This will be a small-scale event in order to maximise the experience for everyone involved, hence places on each day will be limited. Registration is mandatory.

Day 1 is specifically for PhD students and early career researchers in management who do research across the fields of sustainability, CSR and business ethics. We invite those who are passionate about driving change for sustainability through their research and want to learn about participatory and engaged methodological approaches. The day will consist of interactive masterclasses from speakers from disciplines outside management, a panel of editors’ discussion and collective reflections around key questions identified by participants. The event aims to be a platform for discussing the “how” of conducting such types of research - details that often remain absent from publications. We see this event as an opportunity to support young researchers in our field and encourage mentoring within the community.

Day 2 will be focused on advancing sustainability in production and consumption networks. The audience for this day are academics at all stages of their careers who identify with this theme. Day 2 is an agenda-shaping event and will require some preparation so that we engage in constructive discussions – without being too onerous. We will seek to surface the key research questions for the field, particularly around how to move towards meaningful change. This will entail reflecting on what assumptions/theories and research questions we should be asking but also on who we should engage with.

Further details about the event and logistical details are available on the event page here.

Anne Touboulic

Lucy McCarthy

Carsten Reuter

SIG on Purchasing and Product Innovation

Jenny Bäckstrand — Wed, 13 Dec 2017 07:28:04 GMT

Workshop: Purchasing and Product Innovation - explore opportunities for joint research
When: February 13th
Where: Politecnico di Milano
Register: https://politecnicomilano.wufoo.eu/forms/x1f6man0rbiitd/

The SIG in Purchasing & Innovation was launched earlier this year at the IPSERA conference in Veszprem, Hungary, in recognition of the growing interest amongst practitioners and researchers in how purchasing can contribute to the creation of innovations within organizations.

Call for paper and more information: SIG EVENT AT POLITECNICO DI MILANO updated.docx

Thomas Johnsen (Politecnico di Milano)

Marie-Anne Le Dain (University of Grenoble)

SIG on Supply Chain Finance

Jenny Bäckstrand — Mon, 06 Nov 2017 09:44:57 GMT

Workshop: Supply Chain Finance: Research directions and future developments
When: 28^th of November 2017, 9:30 to 12:30
Where: OBA, Oosterdokskade 143, 1011 DL Amsterdam, the Netherlands

Supply Chain Finance (SCF) is a topic that is getting traction both among academics and practitioners. For this reason, the Supply Chain Finance Community (www.scfcommunity.org) has created a Special Interest Group on the topic of SCF. If you are interested to know what SCF implies for academia, if you are interest to meet other academics that are working on this topic, or if you are simply interested in knowing the most recent developments in this fields, please join the workshop by sending an email to: lm.gelsomino@windesheim.nl

Agenda
9:30 Registration and welcome coffee
10:00 Keynote speech: research directions and future developments
10:45 Supply Chain Finance: a new future for logistics?
11:15 (session 1) Meet the editors of the book “Solutions for Financial Sustainability, Risk Management and Resilience in the Supply Chain”
11:15 (session 2) panel session on Supply Chain Finance for PhD candidates
12:30 Lunch

You are also invited to attend the Supply Chain Finance Community 2017 SCF Thesis Award, in which the most interesting students projects will have the possibility to present their work and compete for monetary prizes!

Call for nominations

Erik van Raaij — Wed, 18 Oct 2017 13:01:01 GMT

We are delighted to advertise two of our prestigious Awards, nominations are now open!

- IPSERA Lifetime Achievement Award 2018

- IPSERA Doctoral Dissertation Award 2017

Information on the application and selection process can be obtained from: Kai.Foerstl@ggs.de

25th Anniversary issue of the Journal of Purchasing and Supply Management

Erik van Raaij — Mon, 18 Sep 2017 08:36:56 GMT

Call for papers for the 25th Anniversary Issue
From the editors: Louise Knight and Wendy Tate
Submission deadline for extended abstract: November 10, 2017

Call for papers for IJPDLM

Jenny Bäckstrand — Mon, 15 May 2017 14:19:59 GMT

Global Supply Chain Management Issues in Bottom-of-the-Pyramid Markets
Guest editors: Wendy Tate, Lydia Bals and Donna Marshall
Submission deadline: December 31, 2017

You can read more about the call here, or on:
http://www.emeraldgrouppublishing.com/products/journals/call_for_papers.htm?id=7260

From a methodological viewpoint, multiple types of theoretically-grounded research methodologies including synthesizing and integrative literature reviews, conceptual development, empirical studies, qualitative and empirically-grounded quantitative research, and case study research will be considered.

Call for papers for Supply Chain Management: An International Journal

Jenny Bäckstrand — Thu, 04 May 2017 06:14:05 GMT

New Supply Chain Models: Disruptive Supply Chain Strategies for 2030 (Systematic Literature Reviews)
Guest Editors: Dr Beverly Wagner and Professor Richard Wilding OBE
Submission deadline: December 30, 2017

You can read more about the call on:
http://emeraldgrouppublishing.com/products/journals/call_for_papers.htm?id=7233

IPSERA special topic workshop: Mobilization of Supplier Resources

Jenny Bäckstrand — Tue, 21 Mar 2017 16:20:27 GMT

IPSERA special topic workshop: Mobilization of Supplier Resources

Aarhus University, Denmark

October 23 - October 25, 2017

The workshop in Aarhus aims to bring together researchers interested in the phenomenon of supplier resource mobilization, a phenomenon closely related to supplier resource allocation (Hüttinger et al., 2014). The workshop includes a mixture of paper presentations, various research and paper development activities, a practitioner keynote and opportunities to discuss research plans. For the development sessions, we ask participants to review the work of each other. We expect the workshop to be a forum for developing new research and to strengthen the network of researchers interested in this phenomenon.

Download PDF file to find out more!

IPSERA Special topic workshop 2017.pdf

We have a new website!

Jenny Bäckstrand — Tue, 21 Mar 2017 15:45:30 GMT

Hello everybody!

As you may have noticed - we have a new website. From now on we'll be posting news "Blog-style". This will allow easier navigation and better structure.

Hope you're enjoying our new website, if you have any propositions feel free to let us know.

Thanks!