Guest editorial for NOFOMA 2018 conference special issue

Citation

Stentoft, J., Freytag, P.V., Govindan, K. and Hjalager, A.-M. (2020), "Guest editorial for NOFOMA 2018 conference special issue", International Journal of Physical Distribution & Logistics Management, Vol. 50 No. 1, pp. 101-121. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJPDLM-02-2020-401

Guest editorial for NOFOMA 2018 conference special issue

Publisher’s note

The publisher would like to inform readers that the following Guest Editorial was mistakenly omitted from inclusion alongside the special issue papers it relates to. This error was introduced as part of the editorial process, and the publisher sincerely apologises for this error. The Guest Editorial was originally intended to publish as part of “NOFOMA 2018” guest edited by Jan Stentoft, Per Vagn Freytag, Kannan Govindan and Anne-Mette Hjalager. The publisher would like to take this opportunity to thank the Guest Editors for their time and effort.

This Special Issue of International Journal of Physical Distribution and Logistics Management (IJPDLM) contains the best papers from the 30th NOFOMA Annual Conference. The conference was organized by the Department of Entrepreneurship and Relationship Management at University of Southern Denmark and took place at the campus in Kolding June 14–15, 2018.

The theme for the 30 years anniversary NOFOMA conference was “Relevant logistics and supply chain management research.” Our discipline has always been tied closely to practice. However, during especially the last decade the pressure to publish in ranked academic peer-reviewed journals has become immense which both have positive and negative outcomes. For some it has become “publish or perish.” For others, it has become a game. Therefore, it is important to continue with reflections about whether this pressure to publish has contributed with more relevant and meaningful logistics and supply chain management research. The answer depends much on the eyes that look and the ears that hear. Relevance has both a theoretical and a practical angle (Stentoft and Freytag, 2018). Theoretical relevance in terms of providing new theoretical insights with rigor methodologies. Practical relevance in terms of having something to say to society. It is important to balance theoretical and practical relevance (Stentoft and Rajkumar, 2018).

There has been a great interest for this year’s NOFOMA conference. Initially, 150 abstracts were submitted for the conference. At the deadline for revised full papers and work-in-progress papers, 64 full papers have been accepted for the conference proceeding and 28 work-in-progress papers to be presented at the conference. All full papers have undergone a double-blind review process by using 55 reviewers. In all, 130 attended the conference.

This special issue contains three selected papers. An initial list of ten papers were selected by the NOFOMA 2018 Scientific Committee before the conference based on IJPD&LM review criteria, the committee’s reading of papers and the comments provided by reviewers in a double-blind process. During the conference, the ten papers were ranked in order to identify the winner of the DB SCHENKER Best Paper Award. The committee then shortlisted ten papers to four papers that to their knowledge had the best possibilities for developing their papers further to meet IJPDLM criteria of novelty, relevance, and rigor. Other criteria were also the degree of readiness to be final developed to a flow blown journal paper and the papers overall readability. If needed papers have been revised twice before their acceptance and this process reduced the number of accepted papers to three. We would like to thank IJPDLM for the continued support to publish a special issue of papers of the annual NOFOMA conference. A special thank goes to Professor Patrick Jonsson who has served as area editorial editor of this special issue.

The first paper in this special issue is “Logistics service triad for household waste: consumers as co-producers of sustainability” that is Co-Authored by Árni Halldórsson, Ceren Altuntas Vural and Jessica Wehner. Their conference version of the paper received the DB SCHENCKER Best Paper Award. The paper explores sustainability of waste supply chains regarding energy efficiency of first-mile waste collection systems and quality of waste. The paper is based on primary data collected from respondents including municipality officers, waste service providers and households through brainstorming sessions, semi-structured interviews, site visits and a focus group. Furthermore, secondary as official reports are included for validation. The paper finds that households are co-producers of logistic services providing important inputs in the form of sorting and moving waste and raw materials into new cycles of goods circulating in logistics systems.

The second paper “How the blockchain enables and constrains supply chain performance” is co-authored by Kim Sundtoft Hald and Aseem Kinra. This paper sets out to understand the enabling and constraining roles of blockchain technology in managerial work practices and to conceptualize the technology–performance relationship in supply chain management. A structured literature review is conducted and based on a theory-driven approach, a set of propositions are developed, suggesting how the use of blockchain technology in supply chains can be understood to simultaneously enable and constrain supply chain management and performance.

The third paper “Technology adoption by logistics service providers” is Co-Authored by Mathias Mathauer and Erik Hofmann. The paper reveals the effects of different technology access modes on the successful integration of technological innovations. From the perspective of logistics service providers, managerial and practical implications for the process of technology adoption are discovered. The paper is based in a structured literature review and an explorative case study covering ten technology projects.

Finally, we would like to thank the authors of the papers in this special issue for their collaboration. We would also like to thank the reviewers of the NOFOMA conference papers and the reviewers for the special process of these selected papers. Finally, thank you to all the NOFOMA participants for being present at this 30th year anniversary conference. It has been a great pleasure to organize the conference, and we look forward to seeing you all in Norway in June 2019 for the next NOFOMA Conference.