HISTORICAL REVIEW OF “DEFINING SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT”

WHAT HAS HAPPENED SINCE “DEFINING SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT”

FUTURE AGENDA FOR SCM RESEARCH AND PRACTICES

CONCLUSION

REFERENCES

INTRODUCTION

In the late 1990s, as information technology capabilities improved, there was a greater adoption of supply chain management (SCM) practices, such as sharing demand information along the supply chain to reduce inventory in many Fortune 500 companies. As SCM gained popularity, there were several academic articles as well as practitioner articles that extolled the benefits of SCM, and some even attempted to define the term SCM but they were inconsistent. It was during this time that the article titled “Defining Supply Chain Management” was written in an attempt to shed light on the nature of supply chain management by better describing, explaining, and predicting the phenomenon. As of November 1, 2018, “Defining Supply Chain Management” published by the Journal of Business Logistics (JBL) in 2001 was cited over 4,925 times. We appreciate the JBL editorial team giving us the opportunity to reflect on our article and to discuss the continued relevance of “Defining Supply Chain Management” in light of the many changes that have happened since 2001. As business academics, many of us believe it is our duty to provide theoretical frameworks for emerging business phenomena so that managers can better understand, predict, and control issues arising out of new phenomena in the market. The phenomenon of SCM was at a crossroad in the late 1990s when companies realized that normative statements about supply chain written in 1950s (e.g., Forrester 1958) needed to be adapted in the era of increased global competition. The SCM phenomenon is once again at a crossroad in the age of Industry 4.0 (or the Fourth Industrial Revolution) with the rapid development of information-led technologies. In this context, Zinn and Goldsby (2017b) suggest that theory building should not be separate from the substance of the phenomenon of our interest when it is scant and/or dispersed in the field. Therefore, as was the case when we wrote “Defining Supply Chain Management” we discuss the changing as well as unchanging nature of SCM and based on the ever-changing market we attempt to project the future of SCM. In presenting the relevance of “Defining Supply Chain Management,” we first introduce the historical review of our study. We then discuss the contributions our 2001 JBL article made to theory and practice of SCM. Next, we delve into the environmental changes surrounding SCM. And finally, we suggest that aspects of our article can still provide a relevant framework to support SCM research and practice.