What happens when theory meets practice? Theory fails and practice wins? In academia, more often than not, developing new groundbreaking theories is what is worth pursuing, because it is academically challenging, let alone meriting, despite these theories being practically irrelevant or not offering real(business)-life implications. Nowhere is the outcome of this research-versus-practice debate more important than in the supply chain realm. So say Stanley E Fawcett and Matthew A Waller in Making Sense Out of Chaos: Why Theory is Relevant to Supply Chain Research, an editorial in the Journal of Business Logistics, where they share their vision on how theory’s explanatory power should lead to better decision making, and not be seen as something apart from practice.

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