Journal of Business Logistics— Interface between Entrepreneurship and Supply Chain Management

Starts:  Dec 1, 2021 09:00 (ET)
Ends:  Dec 31, 2021 23:59 (ET)
Associated with  Entrepreneurship (ENT)
Given the broad scope of entrepreneurial activity in firms and the economy, entrepreneurship research applies different foci from many disciplines to advance theory and practice. The importance of instilling an entrepreneurial mindset into all organizations cannot be overemphasized (Kuratko, Fisher, and Audretsch, 2020). When there is an opportunity to reach more customers in a novel way, startups and entrepreneurial companies gravitate to new developments with resources and ingenuity. Supply chain management (SCM) supports—and often initiates—the recognition of such market opportunities. Yet, in the academic arena, research literature has yet to adequately capture this rich dynamic between entrepreneurship and supply chain management.

Corporate entrepreneurship (CE) is a particular area of entrepreneurship that holds much opportunity with supply chain implications. CE refers to the pursuit of entrepreneurial actions and initiatives that transform the established organization through strategic renewal processes and/or extend the firm’s scope of operations into new fields; that is, new product-market segments or technological arenas. While researchers in corporate entrepreneurship have examined internal organizational antecedents promoting and supporting innovation performance, a pressing gap in the literature pervades regarding the role of suppliers, distributors, and logistics service providers in such activity. With regard to small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), few researchers have followed up on Arend and Wisner’s (2005) observation that, “Many firms with 500 and fewer employees…choose to make SCM part of their strategy implementation, while many other SMEs shun it.” Given the relationship between supply chain excellence and firm performance, it appears more research addressing resistance and integration of best practices in supply chain management would advance SME competitiveness. Concurrently, Goldsby and Zinn (2016) assert in the logistics and supply chain literature for scholars to keep up with practice in light of the technological changes and upheaval of business models transforming industry today.

This Special Topic Forum aims to broaden the discussion of the influence supply chain management and entrepreneurship can have on each field. Additionally, new business insights garnered from combining best practices and theory from the two popular fields is also sought. Therefore, the Special Topic Forum invites papers on:

• The role of supply chain management in enhancing the success of startups
• Entrepreneurial opportunities in supply chains
• How to apply corporate entrepreneurship to supply chain organizations
• How to enhance the entrepreneurial mindset of supply chain professionals
• Increasing corporate entrepreneurship within established organizations via advanced supply chain capabilities
• The impact of supply chain management within an entrepreneurial ecosystem
• Strategic entrepreneurship applied by supply chain organizations.
• Corporate venturing initiated by supply chain organizations
• The ability of supply chain organizations to employ entrepreneurial techniques to emerge from business and supply chain disruptions.

These topics serve as particular call-outs but any topic that bridges entrepreneurship with the domain of logistics and supply chain management will be entertained. JBL is open to all methods as long as the method is well-suited to answer the research question(s) at hand and the methodology is applied at the state-of-the-art. Also, it should be noted the editors seek research that addresses the journal’s expectations for rigor and relevance.

All submissions will go through JBL’s double-blind review process. The submission deadline is October 31, 2021, but submissions will be processed as they come in, beginning June 1, 2021. Please submit your paper via Manuscript Central (https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/jbl). When submitting, please indicate that you are submitting for this STF.

You can learn more by contacting the guest editorial team: Michael Goldsby (mgoldsby@bsu.edu), Thomas Goldsby (tgoldsby@utk.edu), and Donald F. Kuratko (dkuratko@indiana.edu).