Editorial: Survey Research Design in Supply Chain Management: The Need for Evolution in Our Expectations

• Published date: 01 January 2018
• Author: Mark Pagell,Barbara Flynn,Brian Fugate
• Date: 01 January 2018
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/jscm.12161

EDITORIAL: SURVEY RESEARCH DESIGN IN SUPPLY

CHAIN MANAGEMENT: THE NEED FOR EVOLUTION

IN OUR EXPECTATIONS

BARBARA FLYNN

Indiana University

MARK PAGELL

University College Dublin

BRIAN FUGATE

University of Arkansas

Survey research in supply chain management has been and will continue

to be an important methodology in advancing theory and practice. How-

ever, supply chain scholars have multiple, divergent views regarding what

is acceptable in terms of survey design, especially regarding respondents.

We build on insights and commentaries provided by JSCM associate edi-

tors to develop and share general guidelines we will use during our tenure

as editors to consider the rigor of survey research designs. We also outline

ways that survey designs for supply chain research can be strengthened.

The aim of this editorial was to clearly communicate expectations to the

JSCM community, so that authors and reviewers can be more successful in

advancing the theory and practice of supply chain management.

Keywords: survey research; single respondent; dyads

INTRODUCTION

This discussion forum resulted from our desire to

clarify what we, as an editorial team, consider to be

acceptable practice in supply chain management sur-

vey research. When we started as co-editors, we agreed

that we all believe that validity is not a property of

methods (Shadish, Cook & Campbell, 2002) and that

all empirical research designs are welcome in JSCM.

However, we also quickly realized that each envi-

sioned somewhat different criteria for determining

when we believed a survey research design could pro-

vide valid results, particularly related to the use of sin-

gle respondents providing all of the data. In addition,

we were concerned that our AEs and reviewers had an

even wider range of views on this topic. The general

single-respondent issue is magnified for supply chain

management research, which necessarily captures a

wide range of levels of analysis, ranging from individ-

uals to dyads and triads to networks. Thus, insights

that are appropriate in a micro-OB setting might not

inform network studies and vice versa.

JSCM is as much a research community as a journal.

The diversity of views helps to drive our research for-

ward and increase its impact. However, we found that

these differing and sometimes divisive views about

research design were getting in the way of our primary

task of contributing to supply chain theory. Therefore,

we felt that we needed to publically discuss these issues

and describe our conclusions about what JSCM’s

boundaries will be while we are co-editors. These

boundaries cannot be static, because research design is

situational and research practice continually evolves;

matching research design to a research question is more

of an art than a science (From the Editors, 2011).

Because we are a research community, we started by

soliciting input from our team of AEs who, in addition

to being leading scholars, have consistently made sig-

nificant research contributions to our community. As

expected, our AEs provided a range of thoughtful and

passionate responses. We followed up with some of

them and invited them to develop their brief responses

into more substantial commentaries, ensuring that a

January 2018 1

Journal of Supply Chain Management

2018, 54(1), 1–15

©2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.