Editorial

• Date: 08 May 2017
• Pages: 226-227
• Published date: 08 May 2017
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1108/IJLM-02-2017-0051
• Author: Britta Gammelgaard
• Subject Matter: Management science & operations,Logistics

Editorial

Greetings from the new editor of IJLM

As many of you have probably noted, I have taken over the editorship of the International

Journal of Logistics Management (IJLM) from the beginning of this year. I would like to use

this opportunity to thank the interim Editor, Ben Hazen, for doing a fantastic job with the

journal over the last couple of years. Ben will still be connected to IJLM and I look forward to

drawing on his experience and research expertise in the years to come. The 2017 volume will

consist of articles accepted by Ben. I would also like to add my sincere thanks to the

members of the Editorial Advisory Board, who have served the journal well, many of them

for many years. Some now want to prioritise their time differently, and a special thank you

to them. Luckily, most want to stay and help develop IJLM to its next level. I am sincerely

grateful for that.

In the future,the editorial profile and philosophy of IJLM will change somewhat. First of all,

it will focus on empirical research, quantitative and/or qualitative. Literature reviews and

conceptual research are, however, still welcome. Articles that solely build on mathematical

modellingwill be referred to otherjournals that have the necessary mathematical editorialand

review expertise and audiences.

Next, IJLM aims to be the outlet for scientific exploration andplayfulness within the field

of logistics and SCM.Here, I am specifically inspired by the editorial“Happy Birthday, AMD”

by Editor AndrewVan de Ven (2016) in the new journal Academy of ManagementDiscoveries.

Here, he describes explorative research as the initial stage of research and the explorative

research process as one that is “[…] uncovering and providing deep insight into managerial

phenomena that are poorly understood”(Van de Ven, 2016, p. 223). Van de Ven further

suggests that an abductive approach will be the most suitable for explorative research.

You can read more about abduction in his editorial and go to the Kovács and Spens’(2005)

article “Abductive reasoning in logistics research”in our own field. The scope of AMD

is of course broader than ours, but the idea of the explorative research process should

be transferable.

A natural consequence of taking an explorative stance in IJLM is an emphasis on

qualitative research. However, qualitative research also exists in its own right and may find

its place as such in the journal. Importantly, there are both objective and subjective

ontological approaches to qualitative research, and there may be substantive new

knowledge waiting to be developed from a subjective ontology: for further insight, see

Gammelgaard and Flint (2012), “Qualitative research in logistics and supply chain

management: beyond the justification for using qualitative methods”. For example, an

interpretive approach to logistics and supply chain research will expand our understanding,

especially of managers’role in our discipline. In my opinion, this will be a natural

continuation of the legacy of the founders of the journal, Professors Douglas M. Lambert

and Martin Christopher. Furthermore, a subjective ontology will open the doors to

understanding the role of the “human touch”in logistics and supply chain systems.

The human aspect, “the people dimension”, was recently listed as the most important,

neglected research issue in the discipline: see Wieland et al. (2016), “Mapping the landscape

of future research themes in supply chain management”in Journal of Business Logistics.

Here, a broader range of ontological approaches may help capture more knowledge relevant

to logistics management, both theory and practice. My vision is that, in the years to come,

IJLM will make a clear and substantial contribution to developing the scientific level of

qualitative research and its input into the field.

The International Journal of

Logistics Management

Vol. 28 No. 2, 2017

pp. 226-227

© Emerald PublishingLimited

0957-4093

DOI 10.1108/IJLM-02-2017-0051

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