Call for Papers—Special Issue of Manufacturing & Service Operations Management: Innovations in Supply Chain Interfaces and Structure

Description

The special issue will focus on how supply chains, both business-to-business and business-to-consumer, are evolving in response to trends in data, globalization, regulation, and technology. Recent advances in analytics, information technologies, product intelligence, production technologies, and automation are creating opportunities for firms to rethink how they should configure their supply chains and how they should manage relationships and interactions with their customers and suppliers. At the same time, trends in globalization and regulation are forcing firms to rethink supply chain structure, sourcing, and strategy. These drivers and trends have created an environment in which many firms are encountering new supply chain challenges as well as new opportunities, leading to major changes in traditional supply chain practice.

This special issue seeks papers that explore how firms are, or should be, reacting to the novel challenges and novel solutions created by these recent trends. This includes, but is certainly not limited to, papers exploring emerging forms of collaboration and coordination that are redefining the relationship between customers and suppliers, innovative use of (big) data and/or technology to improve supply chain performance, novel performance-based contracting challenges and solutions, regulatory effects on supply chains, servicization opportunities and challenges, and structural changes in global supply chains.

We are especially interested in papers that are clearly motivated and informed by industry challenges and practices. We are open to a variety of research methodologies and a wide range of manufacturing and service industries.

Timeline and Process

• Deadline for submission: October 1, 2015

• First-round decision and feedback: January 1, 2016

• Second-round submission (for those papers invited to revise): April 1, 2016

• Final decisions: July 1, 2016

Authors wondering whether a current research project is a fit for the special issue are invited to email a short description (no more than one page) of their project to the co-editors. We will provide feedback on whether the topic meets the goals of the special issue. We will not evaluate the quality of the research based on the description. That determination will be left to the review process. (There is no requirement to submit a description before submitting a paper.)