Deepak Iyengar

Extending total life-cycle thinking to sustainable supply chain design

Conventional supply chain management (SCM) practices have focused only on three life-cycle stages: pre-manufacturing, manufacturing and use. The fourth stage, post-use, probably the most important from a sustainability perspective, is often addressed on a piece-meal basis, only when such practices deliver economic benefits. This paper introduces a total life-cycle-based approach to sustainable SCM (SSCM) that extends beyond the 3Rs of reduce, reuse and recycle to 6Rs that includes recover, redesign and remanufacture. A new definition for SSCM that adopts the total life-cycle approach and triple bottom-line (TBL) is presented. Two existing supply chain frameworks: supply chain operations reference (SCOR) model and the global supply chain forum (GSCF) framework, are evaluated in the context of SSCM to improve economic growth while ensuring environmental protection and societal well-being. The review finds that neither framework explicitly captures the non-economic aspects of SSCM, but the broader view of the GSCF framework offers much promise.

Parameters for Software Piracy Research

Advances in Internet and other digital technologies have opened up new channels and methods for online business. They have also led to a situation where the same channels can be abused and misused. One of these forms of technology abuse, which is becoming increasingly prevalent these days, is the piracy of digital content. This article introduces a relatively comprehensive and unified theoretical framework for studying and understanding a major aspect of digital piracy: namely, software piracy. Based on Routine Activities Theory, Rational Choice Theory, and guardianship concepts, the framework identifies key parameters that can affect the incidence of software piracy. We apply the framework in conducting a systematic examination of 75 articles dealing with software piracy. The examination reveals that a considerable number of parameters have received little or no attention from software-piracy researchers. In addition to suggesting research opportunities, the framework furnishes a systematic approach for structuring the design of future research studies in the realm of software piracy. The insights furnished by this article contribute to future investigations of the software-piracy phenomenon that are needed to avert the economic and social damage caused by software piracy.

Quantitative modeling and analysis of supply chain risks using Bayesian theory

Purpose – Globally expanding supply chains (SCs) have grown in complexity increasing the nature and magnitude of risks companies are exposed to. Effective methods to identify, model and analyze these risks are needed. Risk events often influence each other and rarely act independently. The SC risk management practices currently used are mostly qualitative in nature and are unable to fully capture this interdependent influence of risks. The purpose of this paper is to present a methodology and tool developed for multi-tier SC risk modeling and analysis. Design/methodology/approach – SC risk taxonomy is developed to identify and document all potential risks in SCs and a risk network map that captures the interdependencies between risks is presented. A Bayesian Theory-based approach, that is capable of analyzing the conditional relationships between events, is used to develop the methodology to assess the influence of risks on SC performance Findings – Application of the methodology to an industry case study for validation reveals the usefulness of the Bayesian Theory-based approach and the tool developed. Back propagation to identify root causes and sensitivity of risk events in multi-tier SCs is discussed. Practical implications – SC risk management has grown in significance over the past decade. However, the methods used to model and analyze these risks by practitioners is still limited to basic qualitative approaches that cannot account for the interdependent effect of risk events. The method presented in this paper and the tool developed demonstrates the potential of using Bayesian Belief Networks to comprehensively model and study the effects or SC risks. The taxonomy presented will also be very useful for managers as a reference guide to begin risk identification. Originality/value – The taxonomy developed presents a comprehensive compilation of SC risks at organizational, industry, and external levels. A generic, customizable software tool developed to apply the Bayesian approach permits capturing risks and the influence of their interdependence to quantitatively model and analyze SC risks, which is lacking.

On the measurement and benchmarking of research impact among active logistics scholars

Purpose – Scholarly interest in carrying out impactful research continues to remain high. Yet, given that citations of scholarly work can never decrease with time, traditional measures of research impact (such as raw counts of citations) unwittingly discriminate against early career researchers and also make it hard to identify future high impact scholars. In the current study, the paper compares several commonly used measures of research impact to identify one that best normalizes for the effect of career stage. The measure thus applies equally across most career stages, providing a usable impact benchmark for logistics scholars irrespective of seniority level. The paper also aims to present benchmarks on that metric to help logistics scholars identify their research impact vis-a-vis their peers. Design/methodology/approach – Bibliometric data on the research of 702 logistics scholars were collected and analyzed by dividing the scholars into different cohorts based on seniority. Comparisons of different ...

Return Time Leniency in Online Retail: A Signaling Theory Perspective on Buying Outcomes

Merchandise return policies (MRPs) have long been an important area of interest for operations and supply chain management researchers, who have identified some key advantages and disadvantages of offering comprehensive and convenient return policies. However, there is a lack of rigorous scholarship on one key dimension of MRPs—return time leniency. Understood as the amount of time that buyers have within which to return purchased items, return time leniency is often considered one of the leading indicators of a retailers MRP friendliness. In the current study, we extend prior work on MRPs by introducing a signaling theory perspective to return time leniency. This allows us to develop a more nuanced interpretation of the underlying economics associated with extending the window of time during which returns are accepted. We do so by positioning our study in a retail context where such issues are highly important to consumers—online retail.

Transforming Supply Chains to Create Sustainable Value for All Stakeholders

Promoting sustainability in business operations requires that products, processes as well as the entire supply chain (the system) is designed and operated taking account of not only economic benefits but also environmental and societal implications. Creating value along these three dimensions—that is sustainable value—to all stakeholders is not easy because it requires companies to deliver value to shareholders (one group among the many stakeholders) without transferring value from other stakeholders. From a supply chain perspective, economic value-added has long been used as a measure to evaluate supply chain performance. However, to generate sustainable value to all stakeholders it becomes necessary to also address environmental and societal impacts/benefits as those are two areas through which value is gained or lost for other stakeholders. This chapter presents the concept of sustainable value creation and why the scope of conventional supply chain management processes must be broadened to generate sustainable value, supported by a discussion of successful/disastrous case examples.

Integrated modeling to enhance resilience in sustainable supply chains

The success of organizations operating in complex environments depends on how well its supply chain could adapt to disruptions caused by unanticipated events. Building this resilience requires the capability to identify risks and uncertainties and modeling the impact of them on operations. Both of these have proven to be very difficult to do effectively. With the emerging interest in promoting sustainability companies are now forced to not only consider factors that affect economic performance but also those relating to environmental and societal responsibilities. Thus, increasing resilience in sustainable supply chains (SSCs) calls for a more holistic approach to address risk; it is necessary to consider the risks originating within and outside the company and those affecting all supply chain partners; also, the risks due to and impacting all stakeholder groups must be incorporated. This paper presents a comprehensive review of risks in SSCs and a potential approach to model their impact.