Is supply chain risk is now beginning to enter more and more areas of supply chain thinking? It would seem so. Yesterday’s I posted about a call for papers on supply chain risk in China, and three days ago I posted about a call for papers on global supply chain risk management. Today I have another one, so this is my third “call-for-papers”-posting in just four days. This time it is the well-known and renown International Journal of Physical Distribution & Logistics (IJPDLM) that is planning a Special Issue on papers dedicated to Applying service-dominant (S-D) logic to physical distribution and logistics management, among many others also including topics such as Supply network resilience and Natural disaster management in supply networks. This triggered my interest, but since I had never heard about S-D Logic before, I had to do some digging and googling first, so I could understand what it was that I would be promoting.
Objective and purpose
According to the call,
The objective of this special issue is to facilitate a critical discussion and analysis of the role of physical distribution and logistics management in embracing the challenges in moving thought and practice away from the management of tangible goods towards a goal of service provision.
Potential topics include, but are not limited to:
- Conceptual models for integrating S-D logic with existing models and frameworks
- Information systems for supply and logistics networks
- Logistics customer service performance
- Sense, anticipate, and respond systems
- Digital-intensive supply networks
- Business platforms and supply networks
- Gain sharing in supply networks
- B2B e-commerce
- B2B social media
- Strategic and tactical alliances
- Retail systems
- Recycling and dirt-to-dirt systems
- Food supply chains (global)
- Outsourcing, insourcing, offshoring
- Inventory management, planning and control
- Design science and logistics and supply systems
- Modes of transportation — e.g. road, rail, shipping, air etc. with emphasis on intermodal systems and global systems
- Supply network (chain) security as a service
- Supply network (chain) resilience
- Natural disaster management and supply networks
- Value networks and service ecosystems
Some may say that the list above suggests that security, resilience and disaster management are just a “minor” topic area. I say that the inclusion of risk-related subjects in this vast scope of possible topics shows that supply chain risk is no longer an obscure field of research for the select few, but a field that sparks general interest within the wider supply chain research community.
S-D logic…say again?
I must admit that I am struggling with the concept of S-D Logic. Browsing the S-D Logic official website helped a tiny bit, but it still feels rather abstract:
Service-Dominant (S-D) Logic is a mindset for a unified understanding of the purpose and nature of organizations, markets and society. The foundational proposition of S-D logic is that organizations, markets, and society are fundamentally concerned with exchange of service—the applications of competences (knowledge and skills) for the benefit of a party. That is, service is exchanged for service; all firms are service firms; all markets are centered on the exchange of service, and all economies and societies are service based. Consequently, marketing thought and practice should be grounded in service logic, principles and theories.
Ok, I get the idea, but what does this mean in practice? Well, maybe S-D logic has more in common with value chain thinking than traditional supply chain thinking? I think so.
S-D logic embraces concepts of the value-in-use and co-creation of value rather than the value-in-exchange and embedded-value concepts of traditional goods-dominant G-D logic. Thus, instead of firms being informed to market to customers, they are instructed to market with customers, as well as other value-creation partners in the firm’s value network.
I’m still a bit in the dark here, and it feels a bit intangible, but I guess that is the whole idea about S-D Logic anyway, as the following slide shows, taken from a presentation available at the S-D Logic website:
It’s a bit like when I wrote my book chapter on managing risk in virtual enterprise networks (VENs). I had very little knowledge of what VENs were before I started writing, but the more I read about, the more fascinated I became. Perhaps it will be the same with S-D Logic?
Submission deadline
Remember to submit your paper before 30 November 2011
More information
- IJPDLM: Call for papers
Related link
Related posts
- husdal.com: Managing risk in virtual enterprise networks
- husdal.com: Future value chain trends for 2020
