Doctoral Course: Transformative Supply Chain Research

The focus of this year's course will be "Transformative Supply Chain Research". Please read the information below. To register, please email Sarah Schiffling sarah.schiffling@hanken.fi Opens in new window by 2nd April 2024. You will then receive a reading list and schedule two weeks before the course. The course is assessed by an individual research paper and carries 8 credits.

Transformative Supply Chain Research

Recent worldwide events have highlighted the vital role of supply chain management to society – from the fragility of global supply chains due to pandemic-related disruptions, to societal issues that have become more relevant and visible in supply chain contexts.  Thus, from a contemporary perspective, managing supply chains is as much a social issue as it is a business issue. In order to stay relevant and impactful to industry, the research questions and goals of logistics and supply chain management (LSCM) academics must, therefore, shift. Increasingly, we must consider tackling complex societal issues with no clear solutions, or what has been referred to as “wicked problems” (Pederneiras et al., 2022), with an emphasis on understanding how supply chains can be managed to positively and responsibly impact society.

To address this, LSCM scholars have recently called for future supply chain research to employ a “transformative” lens to examine the role of the supply chain ecosystem in ensuring the health, safety, and well-being of society (Mollenkopf, Esper, Stolze and Ozanne, 2022). Derived from the transformative consumer research (TCR) and transformative service research (TSR) communities (Mick et al., 2012; Anderson et al., 2013, Anderson and Ostrom, 2015), the emerging research stream on transformative supply chain research (TSCR) identifies and examines issues and opportunities across the supply chain ecosystem with the goal of transforming it towards more positive outcomes, specifically to foster individual (e.g., consumer, employee), institutional and societal well-being.

This seminar will explore the emerging area of TSCR.  We will discuss the roots of transformative research, in general, by examining research from the marketing and management disciplines.  We will then engage in dialogue on the new domain of transformative supply chain research.  In particular, we will discuss emerging theoretical lenses, research questions, and methodological approaches that can best advance the notion of LSCM research that is not only impactful to academic and business performance, but that also impacts the well-being of constituents and societies connected to modern supply chains.