Supply Chain Theorizing in a Fast‐Changing World: Response to Scott Saunders

• Author: Christian Busse
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/jbl.12072
• Date: 01 December 2014
• Published date: 01 December 2014

Dialogue

Supply Chain Theorizing in a Fast-Changing World: Response to

Scott Saunders

Christian Busse

Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich

Academic–practitioner interactions consistently raise issues

regarding research relevance. Scott Saunders expressed this

concern via Dialogue, arguing that academics reside in silos. He

lamented that academics fail to get to the core of the supply

chain (SC)-related problems in a fast-changing world. In Saun-

ders’view, our core “product”—theory—is too remote from

business needs. In his 2014 ERS keynote, Stan Fawcett asked

the SC community to consider the question, “What is our return

on investment (ROI) to society?”He challenged, “If we don’t

improve and better communicate our ROI, disruptive forces com-

bined with financial challenges may make us obsolete.”Fast-

paced change gives us an opportunity to improve our ROI. Here,

I extend the dialogue by considering implications of real-world

change for relevant SC-related theorizing.

A THREAT TO OUR CORE COMPETENCE

High-quality theory must reside at the heart of SC research, as

Stan Fawcett and Matt Waller have emphasized since their inau-

gural editorial. However, research has shown that change can

threaten the timelessness of extant theories, requiring adaptive

extension or revision. Even grand theories must evolve. For

example, information processing theory emerged in the early

1970s (i.e., in times of diversification) to tackle uncertainty and

coordination within the firm. As focus shifted to core competen-

cies in the early 1980s, IPT was extended to the dyadic level.

Today, as firms compete in network structures, IPT needs to

extend to a new unit of analysis—the network.

To assess change implications, we must analyze processes and

objects of change. Specifically punctuated equilibrium notes that

organizational structures and processes are relatively stable for

extended periods, featuring only gradual adaptations to environ-

mental necessities. However, there are brief periods of revolu-

tionary upheaval that fundamentally alter the “deep structure”at

the firm’s core. Importantly, the aggregation of gradual changes

is not equivalent to radical change. Similarly, we must distin-

guish between changes of facts and changes of effects. Facts

refer to descriptive features of the real world (i.e., values of the

observed variables). Effects, by contrast, identify causal relations

among variables. Considering processes and objects of change,

we can identify four types of contexts and forms of change. In

Figure 1, I use sustainability-related examples to exemplify these

four types, which I now briefly discuss.

•Revolutions are sudden, ground-breaking changes of causal

effects. As theories revolve around causal relationships, revo-

lutions pose immediate threats to the validity of prior research,

but also depict interesting research topics on their own

account.

•Discoveries refer to revolutionary changes of real-world facts,

which do not directly influence causal effects. They can, how-

ever, influence research models in that they determine suitably

realistic framework conditions.

•Megatrends comprise gradual changes of important real-world

facts. Because they unfold gradually, they are least threatening

to the validity of our research, rather allowing us to calibrate

our research agendas with them in the long run.

•Transformations identify gradual changes of causal effects.

These types of change are easy to miss, thereby underscoring

the importance of replication studies.

OPPORTUNITIES TO IMPROVE RELEVANCE

What are the prescriptive implications of considering change

processes and objects? I present five possibilities below—each of

which is naturally open to dialogue.

1. Consideration of boundary conditions in our theorizing: The

existence of real-world change cautions us not to “mimic

physics”through the generation of supposedly timeless the-

ory. Therefore, we must bear in mind that in our application-

oriented discipline, theories possess (temporal) boundary

conditions, which we should pin down more often and

exactly.

2. Change-anticipating dedication of resources into research

efforts: The brief discussion of change has emphasized that

both timeliness and timelessness of research topics can vary.

We need to channel resources to leverage research efforts.

We do not like to face the fact, but opportunity costs of

research matter in modern universities. For example, I recall

Hans-J€

urgen Ewers, the late president of the Technical Uni-

versity of Berlin, stating: “We cannot afford to study the right

hind leg of the flea.”At the same time, there is a need to

study important causal relations more comprehensively, con-

sidering all their nuances and complexities, as expressed by

Corresponding author:

Christian Busse, Department of Management, Technology, and

Economics, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich, Weinberg-

strasse 56/58, 8092 Zurich, Switzerland; E-mail: cbusse@ethz.ch

Journal of Business Logistics, 2014, 35(4): 359–360 doi: 10.1111/jbl.12072

© Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals