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The purpose of this paper is to propose the use of case studies in teaching an undergraduate course of Internet for Business in class, based on the revised Bloom’s taxonomy. The study provides the empirical evidence about the effect of case-based teaching method integrated the revised Bloom’s taxonomy on students’ incremental learning, measured by the four constructs: knowledge application, higher-order thinking, practice evaluation knowledge and knowledge improvement.

In this study, learning activities associated with the revised taxonomy-based learning strategy were proposed to support the development of higher-level cognitive skills. Revised application scale, higher-order thinking scale, practice evaluation knowledge scale and knowledge improvement scale were used to measure students’ perception of skills corresponding to their level of application, analysis, evaluation and creation, respectively. After completing each task pertinent to case studies, students were encouraged to complete the survey questionnaire. Structural equation modelling (SEM) was employed to examine the relationships between constructs. Students participate in a course where case studies are employed as the main learning activities to promote higher-order thinking. Upon completing the course, they fill in a survey to evaluate the four constructs of incremental learning: level of knowledge application, higher-order thinking, practice evaluation knowledge and knowledge improvement. The relationships between the four constructs are then examined using SEM.

Analysis reveals that with the use of case-based learning activities, knowledge application creates a positive impact on higher-order thinking. Higher-order thinking has positive influence on practice evaluation knowledge. Eventually, practice evaluation knowledge produces a positive effect on knowledge improvement. The results show the desired effects of incremental learning.

The case studies designed for teaching the Internet for Business course might not be suitable in terms of content for other courses, which limit the implication of the findings.

The key implication is that cognitive process is enhanced by using case studies where learning activities are designed, based on the revised Bloom’s taxonomy.

The paper offers a comprehensive perspective on incremental learning where students’ knowledge of Internet for Business moves developmentally towards the higher-order cognitive process dimension of the revised Bloom’s taxonomy.

The purpose of this paper is to illustrate the implementation of the flipped classroom method in teaching the course and to investigate the student’s perceived helpfulness, learning outcomes and satisfaction in respect of the pre-class learning videos.

Pre-class learning videos were integrated into a course to encourage students to acquire knowledge before lectures and workshops. Having completed the flipped classroom, a delivery questionnaire containing all items was distributed to all of the participants. The data collected were analysed statistically, using a structured equation modelling technique.

Findings indicate that the perceived quality of experience of using videos before lectures and workshops has a positive influence on the perceived helpfulness of the pre-class learning videos. Furthermore, the perceived helpfulness of the pre-class learning videos has a positive effect of the acquisition perceived learning outcomes. The perceived helpfulness of the pre-class learning videos also has a positive impact on the student satisfaction with the course. Finally, there is a positive and causal relationship between the perceived learning outcomes and student’s satisfaction with the course.

Analysis reveals that the learning process and student satisfaction are improved by using pre-class learning videos.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a scalable quantitative approach to evaluate alignment within and between courses and programs in higher education for benchmarking purpose.

The revised Bloom’s taxonomy, which combines a cognitive process dimension and a knowledge dimension, is used as a basis for categorizing national standards, program and course learning outcomes (CLOs) and assessment methods. Alignments between programs and national standards, programs and courses and assessment tasks and courses are then measured using a series of Cohen’s κ statistics. Two undergraduate business programs offered at an Australian university were used as examples to demonstrate the proposed method as an alignment evaluation tool.

The findings reveal that the two sample programs are better aligned with national standards than with their respective constituent courses. The degree of alignment between CLOs and assessment methods varies from course to course within the programs. This might be related to the lack of clarity of some learning outcome statements and the complexity of certain assessment methods.

This study lends insight into the use of an alignment mapping for benchmarking academic programs in higher education. To serve mainly as an illustration of the proposed approach, the case study is limited to two undergraduate business programs offered at the same university.

Universities can use the proposed approach to benchmark their academic programs against the national standards and similar programs offered by other competing educational institutions. The alignment indices can also serve as yardsticks to continuously improve the consistencies within and among academic programs to ensure quality.

The proposed method offers a consistent basis to compare the degrees of alignment of different higher education programs with national standards and their respective constituent courses, hence enabling benchmarking for continuous improvement. It also reveals how the alignment between different parameters in teaching and learning can be improved, thereby facilitating incremental learning and enhancing student performance.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how a retail distribution network can be rationalised from a spatial perspective to improve service responsiveness and delivery efficiency.

This paper applies spatial analytics to examine variability of demand, both spatially and from a service delivery perspective, for an auto-parts retail network. Spatial analytics are applied to map the location of stores and customers to represent demand and service delivery patterns and to delineate market areas.

Results show significant spatial clustering in customer demand; whilst the delivery of products to customers, in contrast, is spatially dispersed. There is a substantial gap between revenue generated and costs. Market area analysis shows significant overlap, whereby stores compete with each other for business. In total, 80 per cent of customers can be reached within a 15-minute-radius, whilst only 20 per cent lies outside the market areas. Segmentation analysis of customers, based on service delivery, also shows the prevalence of the Pareto principle or 80:20 rule whereby 80 per cent of the revenue is generated by 20 per cent of customers.

Spatially integrated strategies are suggested to improve the efficiency of the retail network. It is recommended that less accessible and unprofitable customers could be either charged extra delivery cost or outsourced without the risk of a substantial reduction in revenue or quality of service delivery.

Innovative application of spatial analytics is used to analyse and visualise unit-record sales data to generate practical solutions to improve retail network responsiveness and operational efficiency.

Product returns management (PRM) is a core supply chain management process. Though the importance of value creation and appropriation is acknowledged, extant studies on value in product returns tend to be limited to the residual asset value (cost recovery) of the returned products. Further, value discussion in PRM is limited to the value implications for a single party in the returns transaction rather than all the product returns chain entities. The purpose of this paper is to explore value creation and appropriation in a triad of supplier-retailer-3PL in the product returns chain.

The study uses an inductive qualitative approach. Semi-structured interviews with executives in a triad of organisations formed the primary data source for the study.

The paper identifies six value drivers and develops a value creation and appropriation framework. It shows that facilitation, value orientation, process alignment and relational factors are key drivers of value creation and appropriation in PRM.

The findings reinforce the view that value creation and appropriation are the outcomes of multi-party interactions in a product return chain. The framework presented contributes to the literature by showing the linkages amongst key drivers.

The findings show the important role of external process facilitation and how a 3PL contributes to value creation in a triadic relationship.

Research based on a triadic product returns chain is a unique dimension of this study.

Though resource based view (RBV) has been applied extensively in supply chain studies to examine how firms utilize logistics resources to attain superior performance, relatively little attention has been directed to exploring the effects of operational routines on logistics and supply chain (L&SC) competencies. The purpose of this paper is to examine the causal linkages between operational routines and L&SC competencies of Chinese logistics service providers (LSPs).

A conceptual model on the relationships between operational routines and L&SC competencies was developed based on RBV. In total, 76 valid responses from a survey of Chinese LSPs provided the empirical data for the testing of the formulated hypotheses. Confirmatory factor analysis was used to develop the constructs for the model and hierarchical multiple regression analysis was performed to test the hypothesized relationships.

Not all operational routines were drivers of L&SC competencies in the Chinese logistics market. Processes for increasing responsiveness are most important in contributing to building positioning, distribution support and agility competencies. Processes for increasing flexibility are only effective in developing positioning competency, while performance benchmarking has little contribution to competency building in the Chinese market. ICT support strengthens the relationship between performance benchmarking and distribution support, but weakens that between processes for increasing flexibility and distribution support as well as that between processes for increasing responsiveness and agility.

This study raises more questions than it attempts to answer, opening up a number of horizons for further research into the logistics market of China. Several follow‐up studies have been suggested, including a multiple case study on how Chinese LSPs contrive their operational routines to respond to the exigencies of market situations.

Findings from this study have significant managerial implications in resource investment and competency building to generate competitive advantage in the Chinese logistics market.

This research sheds new insights on the routine‐capability‐competency building chain in China's fragmentary logistics industry. It indicates that despite over three decades of economic reform, and ascension to the World Trade Organization, China remains a distinctively unique market environment with ingredients for operation success vastly different from those of the developed economies.

This paper aims to examine how Chinese apparel retailers manage their production outsourcing risks and why they elect to manage those risks in a particular manner.

The investigation used the case study approach to explore factors driving two Chinese apparel retailers operating in different market environments to manage their production outsourcing risks.

The selection of production outsourcing risk management strategies hinges on what apparel retailers view as the most important value their products provide to customers. Product values were linked to specific product characteristics as well as the market environment in which the apparel retailers operated. The retailer that regarded product quality as a key value driver was found to place emphasis on manufacturer selection and use of a formal contract for process control. The retailer that viewed newness and variety as a value driver opted to cultivate a strong, committed business relationship based on Guanxi to achieve speed‐to‐market.

As a case study research, the findings of this study have their limitations in generalisability. Given that one of the retailers did not invoke Guanxi to cultivate a long‐term business relationship with its outsourced manufacturers, the role of Guanxi in outsourcing risk management in China deserves further exploration, as businesses in China become more globalised.

This study grounds mainstream outsourcing strategy literature on operational practice through case studies. It highlights the influence of both product characteristics and market environment in dictating the choice of outsourcing risk management strategies in apparel manufacturing.

The study views outsourcing risk management from the perspective of minimizing outsourcing failures, rather than achieving outsourcing success. It reveals that risk management behavior of apparel retailers was linked to the notion of value protection, which varied according to what they considered as their principal product value drivers.

Sharing of risk benefits supplies network collaborations. The complex mix of heterogeneous collaborators in supply networks, however, also increases the complexity of the risk profiles of inter‐related components within these networks. For a given network collaboration, several structures of network relationship are possible, with each carrying distinctive risk implications. This paper seeks to develop a conceptual framework for analysing the differential risks in alternative network structures.

To capture the structural significance of inter‐organisational dependency in networks, alternative typology of network relationships is formulated using agency theory. Basic constructs were developed for analysing risks in supply networks, with configurations ranging from the single‐principal, single‐agent to the complex multi‐principal, multi‐agent scenarios.

The study finds that dynamics of risk in network systems depend not only on the typology of networks, but also on the functional role of each collaborator inherent in the network through agreements on supply and incentives, and supply performance.

The proposed framework provides a structured approach for identifying and assessing risk dynamics and their differential impacts on different levels of supply networks. It provides insights into the dynamics of risk events and identifies network configurations that are vulnerable to different levels of risk.

International Journal of Logistics Management (IJLM) celebrated 30 years of its publication in 2019. This study provides a retrospective overview of the IJLM articles between 1990 and 2019.

The authors applied bibliometrics to study and present a retrospective summary of the publication trends, citations, pattern of authorship, productivity, popularity depicting influence, and the impact of the IJLM, its contributors, their affiliations, and discusses the conceptual layout of IJLM's prolific themes.

With 23 yearly articles, IJLM contributed 689 specialized research papers on Supply Chain Management (SCM) by 2019. Authorship grew by 42 new contributors adding up to 1,256 unique IJLM authors by 2019. Each of its lead contributors associated with 1.55 other authors to contribute an article in the journal among which 93% are cited at least once. Survey-based research dominated in last 30 years. The h-index of the journal is 73 while its g-index suggests that 133 IJLM articles were cited at least 17,689 times in Scopus. IJLM authors affiliated to the Cranfield University and the US contributed the highest count of articles. Bibliographic coupling analysis groups IJLM articles into eight bibliographic clusters while network analysis exposes the thematic layout of IJLM articles.

The literature selection is confined to the Scopus database starting from 1990, a year before the inception of the IJLM, thereby limiting its scope.

This study is the first retrospective bibliometric analysis of the IJLM, which is useful for aspiring contributors.