Editorial

• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1108/IJLM-02-2020-350
• Pages: 1-2
• Date: 04 May 2020
• Published date: 04 May 2020
• Author: Britta Gammelgaard
• Subject Matter: Logistics,Management science & operations

Editorial

IJLM’s 30th anniversary—looking back

It has been around a year since I wrote the editorial congratulating International Journal of

Logistics Management (IJLM) on its 30th anniversary. Many great papers are published in

volume 30 and, as something new, the journal has published invited papers in issues 2, 3 and

now 4 –one in each issue. The authors of these papers were invited to give their point of view

on aspects that –according to them –we as a research community need to discuss and focus

more on, i.e. to cast a critical perspective on our discipline. The intention of inviting articles

with a critical angle was first and foremost to spur discussion and debate, encouraging us all

as researchers to always ask ourselves what we are doing and why. With such an ongoing

debate, I believe that logistics management as a field has the best chance to develop itself to

the benefit of theory, practice and, not least, society in general. Secondly, the articles should

inform the journal’s audience about the direction in which the journal wishes to inspire (see

also “Editorial: Congratulations to IJLM on its first 30 years”in Vol. 30, No. 1).

The first invited paper “Rediscovering Relevance”in issue 2 is by one of IJLM’s

founders and a major contributor to logistics and supply chain management thinking,

Prof. Douglas M. Lambert of Ohio State University. In this paper, Dr Lambert takes as his

point of departure the general criticism that business schools lack managerial relevance and

suggests that scientific logistics management journals should work harder to secure such

relevance in order to create better return-of-investment for business and society. Dr Lambert

claims that competition among universities, journal rankings and quantitative metrics for

evaluating research spurs behavior that is more focused on these metrics than on content and

utility. He is not alone in that concern. Secondly, Dr Lambert points to a methodological

development in the neighboring discipline, marketing and criticizes the method of

experiment, in particular, with the hope that it will not be used in logistics management as

it is used in the examples he mentions.

As editor, I have received comments from colleagues who raise concerns with the

abovementioned methodological criticism. Therefore, I would like to encourage potential

authors who see fertile ground for using experiments as a research method in logistics

management to write a paper on the topic for IJLM. Answering the questions on when, how

and why experiments will be a good research method for logistics management, may enhance

the understanding of logistics management.

In issue 3, Dr Fredrik Nilsson of Lund University in Sweden discusses the use of systems

theory in the logistics management discipline in his invited article, “A complexity perspective

on logistics management—Rethinking assumptions for the sustainability era”. His claim is

that most often researchers work on a systems level that is too low to capture the complexity

of the practice field, a weakness intensified by recent developments in technology and

sustainability. He suggests that research in logistics and supply chain management uses

Boulding’s systems hierarchy (Boulding, 1956) to determine which level to work on and what

consequences this choice will have on research results. Dr Nilsson’s claim is that working on a

higher system level than, for example, that of cybernetic systems will bring the discipline

closer to real-life logistics and supply chain management.

Finally, in issue 4, we publish the article “Collective Action in SCM: A call for activist

research”by Drs Anne Touboulic of Nottingham University and Lucy McCarthy of Queen’s

University Belfast, both in the UK. In the light of, in particular, terrifying climate change, the

two authors remind us as academics to take a stand and, if we deliberately choose not to do so,

this is a stand also. They ask us researchers to question the norms and conventions of the

Editorial

1

The International Journal of

Logistics Management

Vol. 31 No. 1, 2020

pp. 1-2

© Emerald Publishing Limited

0957-4093

DOI 10.1108/IJLM-02-2020-350