Dr. Stephen Arthur LeMay

As the Coronavirus shifted into a worldwide pandemic supply chains everywhere began experiencing comprehensive breakdowns. From continent to continent, suppliers, producers, distributors, and all services facilitating the movement and storage of products scrambled to alter plans in effort to secure enough product to meet customer demand. At one time or another during the pandemic most all failed to keep product flowing.
During this time, supply chain faculty at a southeastern U.S. comprehensive regional university began weekly Zoom sessions to learn first-hand what business alumni were doing to help their firms survive. These are their stories and the lessons they learned by working in the field during Covid-19. Our qualitative analysis of the Zoom transcripts identified 5 emerging themes depicting the immediate challenges being met by our informants that pertained to personnel shortages, supply/demand bullwhip effects, supply chain flexibility, public coordination challenges, and opportunistic logistics behaviors. The lessons learned may assist today’s managers in preparing supply chains for the next unforeseen worldwide supply chain challenge.

In this paper, we examine disruptions in the automobile manufacturing supply chain that resulted from the COVID19 pandemic. We explore the relationships between organizational resilience and agility and supply chain resilience and agility. We frame this exploration in terms of rare earth elements (REEs) and microchips, supplies that come from Tier 3 and Tier 4 in the automobile supply chain. We look at some adaptations made by Volkswagen to adapt to these disruptions but note that organizational resilience and adaptation does not always result in supply chain adaptation.

Marketing concepts are rarely applied to policing, although for most modern societies it is an essential function and part of the social contract between governments at all levels and the publics they serve. In this paper, we look specifically at how marketing concepts apply to policing in Ontario, Canada. We frame our examination with concepts like the halo effect, the availability effect, and other ideas outlined by Kahneman (2013).

Relying on mixed methods, more specifically a two-year-long netnography of online communities and a quantitative survey to test a hypothesized model, this study examines small firms' behavior during a supply chain disruption. We carry out this purpose through two theoretical lenses, the resource-based view of the firm (RBV) and Real Options Theory (RO). The responses suggested a strong relationship between the two theoretical approaches, with the conditions described by RBV leading to a complex variety of real options. Responses to disruption included hoarding, developing new suppliers, price changes, and product mix changes. Respondents also showed a version of coopetition. This research showed that small firms adapt quickly to supply chain disruptions and often cooperate in dealing with the issues. They use technology to communicate on supply issues and often cooperate to solve common problems. The research could be replicated in other industries, with medium-sized firms, and with large firms. A key contribution of this research makes is that almost all previous research has used simulations while this research relies on data collected from business owners during major supply disruptions.

This article explores the problems presented to taxonomies and definitions of social enterprise by a specific kind of organization, for-profit prisons. While these organizations are often and rightly criticized for their performance, they are fundamentally social enterprises by many of the definitions and taxonomies offered in the literature. This analysis uses a naïve matrix for classifying social enterprise to outline the problems created by these ethically and socially challenged organizations.

Supply chain management remains a young field, one that has struggled to define itself in the most literal sense. This research looks at some of the most available definitions of supply chain management, analyzes their content, and explains the essence of the definitional problem. It does not attempt to define supply chain management--that would be a bit like driving onto a crowded road while complaining about the traffic--but it does attempt to lay out the path or paths that need to be followed to arrive at a consensus definition.

The authors review the history of job satisfaction research as it relates to truck drivers and truck driver turnover. Job satisfaction, particularly the Minnesota Satisfaction Questionnaire, has played a major role in driver turnover research over the past 25 years. But the relationship between truck drivers as subjects and job satisfaction as a concept goes much deeper than that and has a much longer history. This article addresses that history and puts that aspect of driver research into historical context.

In this research, we examined hypothetical sustainable projects in the context of Jonathan Haidt's Moral Foundations Theory. We examined whether respondents responses could be predicted based on from this theory based on their self-described political orientations. We analyzed 200 responses to an electronically distributed survey questionnaire. The results suggest that Moral Foundations Theory has many implications for marketing. We also found potentially more parsimonious approaches to gathering data related to marketing and Moral Foundations Theory.

This project explored the organizational and individual growth and development needs in 43 logistics organizations. These organizations included manufacturers, asset-based third parties, non-asset-based third parties, retailers, and financial institutions. Results are based on the analysis of data from 632 responses to The Common Metric Questionnaire, a 413-item job-classification survey, and 354 responses to scales that measure personality, customer orientation, market orientation, and need for cognition. Formal, phenomenological interviews were conducted with 35 top logistics managers, and dozens of unstructured interviews were completed with logisticians at all levels of the organization. The research indicates that there are six job families in the warehouse: operating employees, lead operators, supervisors, administrative support, planning support, and managers. The three key needs of employees are competence, employability, and betterment of self. While the investment in the necessary training programs to meet these needs may at first seem prohibitive, it is a key source of competitive advantage in the future. In light of these findings, a two-pronged approach to training should be considered. First, training should develop a common view of the logistics system and its role in the firm, share or expand job knowledge, and refresh or enhance job skills. Second, training for logistics jobs usually takes the form of informal on-the-job experience--another way of saying trial and error. Logistics organizations cannot afford to wait for their employees to become competent and should commit to formal training systems and programs as key elements in creating organizational advantages. A list of the training needs for each of the six job groups is provided.