Wendy Phillips

Supply management: is it a discipline?

Purpose – To examine management literature for guidance on what constitutes a discipline. To examine supply management publications to determine whether the field constitutes a discipline or an emerging discipline. To contribute a structured evaluation to the body of supply management theory/discipline development knowledge. Design/methodology/approach – Literature review of what constitutes a discipline and an initial assessment of whether supply management is a discipline. Development of research questions used to design tests, using combinations of qualitative pattern matching, journal quality rankings, and social science citations index impact factor. Application of the tests, to evaluate field coherence, quality and the existence of a discipline-debate, to determine whether supply management is an emerging discipline. Findings – An initial literature review finds supply management not to be a discipline, as the field lacks quality of theoretical development and discussion, and coherence. Tests for increasing evidence of coherence, quality and impact yield positive results, indicating that supply management is progressing in its theoretical development. The test findings combined with the existence of the start of a discipline-debate indicate that supply management should be judged to be an emerging discipline. Originality/value – Drawing from the management literature, the paper provides a unique structured evaluation of the field of supply management, finding it not to be a discipline, but showing evidence of being an emerging discipline.

Social Innovation and Social Entrepreneurship A Systematic Review

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) literature suggests CSR initiatives extend beyond meeting the immediate interests of stakeholders of for-profit enterprises, offering the potential to also enhance performance. Growing disillusionment of for-profit business models has drawn attention to social entrepreneurship and social innovation to ease social issues. Adopting a systematic review of relevant research, the article provides collective insights into research linking social innovation with social entrepreneurship, demonstrating growing interest in the area over the last decade. The past 5 years have seen a surge in attention with particular focus on the role of the entrepreneur, networks, systems, institutions, and cross-sectoral partnerships. Based on the findings of the review, the authors synthesize formerly dispersed fields of research into an analytical framework, signposting a “systems of innovation” approach for future studies of social innovation and social entrepreneurship.

Sustainable procurement: emerging issues

Sustainable procurement is the pursuit of sustainable development objectives (WCED, 1987) through the purchasing and supply process, and involves balancing environmental, social and economic objectives. It is rising on the policy agenda for many countries, but knowledge remains limited. This study explores emerging issues through focus groups at a sustainable procurement workshop. The 44 participants included senior policy-makers, academics and practitioners from the public and private sectors and professional bodies. Focus group discussion data were taped and analysed. Four sustainable procurement themes were explored: (1) moving from an environmental focus to social and economic dimensions; (2) sustainability and innovation; (3) ethical supply and (4) measurement issues. The findings seek to inform the academic and practitioner debate on sustainable procurement.

Public procurement of innovations, diffusion and endogenous institutions

Purpose – Public procurement has been increasingly seen as an important innovation policy tool. One neglected aspect of the public procurement of innovation is, however, diffusion. The purpose of this paper is to counter this neglect by exploring how institutional coordination may affect the diffusion of innovations procured by a public agency.Design/methodology/approach – A case study including semi‐structured interviews and the consulting of different documents were used to study how institutions and institutional coordination affect the adoption and diffusion of innovation.Findings – Several endogenous institutions were identified that act as barriers to the diffusion of innovation throughout an organisation. Attempts to re‐design and negate these barriers were also identified.Research limitations/implications – Institutional analysis of innovation has a tendency to be limited to formal and exogenous institutions. The paper underscores the importance of taking into account the endogenous institutional ...The role of the public agency as a pacer of private sector innovation has been emphasised over recent years, especially in the context of the EU. The general ambition has been to encourage public agencies to actively stimulate private sector innovation rather than procure existing products. This has triggered an increased interest among researchers and practitioners to identify best practice examples where public agencies have successfully procured innovation. Rather than addressing this demand-oriented perspective, this paper investigates the role of public agencies as adopters of private-sector innovation. Employing an innovation systems perspective, the paper focuses on institutions as enablers and as barriers of innovation diffusion. The paper presents an explorative case study: the introduction of a new catheter into the English National Health Service and its diffusion among NHS trusts in England. Different institutional factors are identified which have had an affect on the catheter’s adoption and diffusion.

Distributed Manufacturing: scope, challenges and opportunities

This discussion paper aims to set out the key challenges and opportunities emerging from distributed manufacturing (DM). We begin by describing the concept, available definitions and consider its evolution where recent production technology developments (such as additive and continuous production process technologies), digitisation together with infrastructural developments (in terms of IoT and big data) provide new opportunities. To further explore the evolving nature of DM, the authors, each of whom are involved in specific applications of DM research, examine through an expert panel workshop environment emerging DM applications involving new production and supporting infrastructural technologies. This paper presents these generalisable findings on DM challenges and opportunities in terms of products, enabling production technologies and the impact on the wider production and industrial system. Industry structure and location of activities are examined in terms of the democratising impact on participating network actors. The paper concludes with a discussion on the changing nature of manufacturing as a result of DM, from the traditional centralised, large-scale, long lead-time forecast-driven production operations to a new DM paradigm where manufacturing is a decentralised, autonomous near end user-driven activity. A forward research agenda is proposed that considers the impact of DM on the industrial and urban landscape.

Investigating innovation in complex health care supply networks: an initial conceptual framework

This paper explores the constraints and enablers of the process of innovation within the context of UK health care supply networks. Building on a comprehensive literature review of established and recent innovation and supply network research, the paper presents three levels of supply network analysis: sector level supply networks, focal organization supply networks and dyadic supply relationships. The paper reports on the first round of fieldwork conducted with 12 different health care organizations. The three different levels are applied during analysis and the findings are considered in terms of the key themes that have emerged and the practical and theoretical challenges that they represent.

Transparency in supply relationships: concept and practice

This publication contains reprint articles for which IEEE does not hold copyright. Full text is not available on IEEE Xplore for these articles.

Change Management in the Public Sector: The Use of Cross-Functional Teams

Adoption of change management best practices continues to be offered as a route towards improved cost, quality and productivity of public services. These approaches are predominantly drawn from private sector research and their application by the public sector remains a relatively under-researched area. In this article we investigate with three case studies of local authorities one popular private sector change management approach – cross-functional team-based working. We analyse the varying success of three cross-functional teams and the organisational mechanisms that supported their implementation. We identify four requirements for success. The first three concur with established private sector research on cross-functional working (the need for the organisational leader to clearly support the team; cultural and structural issues that support cross-functional integration; funding support), although we find greater subtlety needed in their application in the public sector. Our research also uncovers a fourth critical requirement – the need to break the status-quo and overcome resistance to change. We find no evidence that these conditions cannot be met in the public sector and suggest cross-functional teams as a positive approach to be integrated in public sector change programmes.

Implementing value‐transparency in supply relations

Purpose – To explore and identify the strategic approaches firms may follow in their pursuit of value transparency (VT) in inter‐organisational relations in supply networks.Design/methodology/approach – Through the use of game theory an understanding of the difficulties of co‐operation and information transfer is developed. Game theory and marginal analysis facilitate an advanced application of VT.Findings – While the article acknowledges the limitations of prescriptive precision in strategy matters, it is not proposed that firms would follow any single part of the outlined strategies. However, through rational analysis of the strategic options presented it may be possible to foresee potential negative outcomes, and through structuring undesirable scenarios managers may be able to reduce the risk of their occurrence.Practical implications – A model is proposed that aids firms in the selection of supply partners for VT and VT modes. Recognising that certain conditions will be more likely to support a more ...

The difficulties of supplying new technologies into highly regulated markets: the case of tissue engineering

This study provides an insight into the difficulties companies encounter in transposing basic science into commercially viable healthcare technologies, focusing on the issue of establishing a dominant supply model within a highly regulated market. The core issue is how to scale-up customised scientific processes into products able to supply wider and possibly mass markets. In tracing the development of approaches to scaling-up, the paper highlights the influence regulatory regimes have on high technology regulated products and services. The paper details the implications of two contrasting supply initiatives towards operationalising tissue engineering, based on differences in regulatory regimes between Europe and the USA.