https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7281-2129
In May 2022, the 14th meeting of the International Association for Research in Logistics and Supply Chain Management was held in Clermont-Ferrand, with a theme that flowed quite naturally from the realities highlighted by the global pandemic experienced in the two years before the conference: ‘Logistics and Supply Chain Management at the crossroads’. In recent years, certain logistical models have been called into question by peripheral but growing social movements such as localism, social and environmental responsibility and degrowth. In fact, since 2020, we have had the opportunity to observe the importance of logistics and supply chain management in both local and international transactions. It has to be said, however, that this back-office variable has been highlighted from an angle that is not always particularly flattering, and that does not reflect the reality of the issues facing players in this period of international pandemic. The initial idea was rather to question actors and organisations to find out if everything that had made logistics and Supply Chain Management so strong over the past 20 years would need to be revisited today.
Indeed, in the light of the various crises that have marked the global economy since 2020, we have to admit that it is legitimate to ask whether certain limits of the logistics models that have prevailed over the last 20 years have not been achieved. Built, for a long time, on the logic of cost optimisation, massive warehousing and scale economies, logistics chains have shown that, in the event of geographically significant and long-term problems, they can find it difficult to fulfil their primary missions. So, what have we not been told or heard about the various shortages, delivery delays or lead-time problems. While logistics professionals have done their utmost to supply the end customer, the negative effects of logistics are still very much on the minds of end customers.
In other words, should we be looking at the resilience of current models and trying to find solutions to re-optimise them, or should we be thinking about new supply chain models? New dimensions have emerged, notably those relating to ecology, which has been a strong catalyst for the development of the notion of the Green Supply Chain, of which decarbonation is the current figurehead. This is an interesting challenge for industry professionals. Can we really aspire to truly green supply chains, or is this just wishful thinking? How can we work in a way that preserves the environment, without continuing to destroy it through other actions? How can we integrate all the links in a green supply chain into a virtuous action that creates value for each link?
Other crucial challenges arise, particularly for industry, in terms of improving service levels, which raises the question of the volumes of flows managed by supply chains. In other words, should we stock or not? And if so, what volumes and where? This thorny issue is at the heart of many manufacturers’ concerns, and their positions on these dimensions diverge. Those operating on a B-to-C or B-to-B-to-C basis are stubbornly opposed to destocking (due to the rising value of their inventories as a result of rising energy costs, among other factors), and to redundancy between multiple storage areas as close as possible to their markets, to avoid suffering future shortages for their end customers. On the other hand, those who are more focused on B-to-B industrial logics don’t take this approach, and concentrate their efforts on optimising storage costs and lead times for greater efficiency.
One of the topics addressed during the conference was the question of global regionalisation. A number of interesting examples highlighted the complexity of the challenges to be met, and in particular the difficulty that players in the international economy have in finding alternative solutions precisely because of this regionalisation. Diversifying countries of supply is the most basic of wisdoms, but what happens when all suppliers are located on the same continent (in Asia, for example), which is under a health embargo? Alternatives that can be mobilised on other continents are not necessarily plethoric, which poses a problem of delivery time in the event of a major crisis, reminding us of the interconnectedness of world economies. The absence of, or difficulty in finding, back-up solutions highlights the hidden fragility of supply chains, whether international or regional. The question of securing supplies in other ‘regions of the world’ has never been so present.
A final important factor that has been highlighted is the emergence of the circular economy. Today, product recyclability is no longer a theoretical concept, but an economic reality around which new players are gravitating, for whom logistics models need to be reinvented. Under growing pressure from increasingly responsible consumers, the new vigour of short distribution channels, product recyclability and the emergence of the ‘second-hand’ economy are reshuffling the deck on the logistics models used over the last 20 years. In this context, the resilience of companies and their remobilisation must be urgent, rapid and exemplary. We can well imagine that a company that misses this strategic turning point today will be severely handicapped in the relatively near future as far as its business model is concerned.
Among the wide variety of sessions and papers presented by researchers and practitioners, this issue highlights the diversity of the challenges faced by companies today, with a selection of four papers from the sessions.
In their paper (best paper award at the 2022 conference) entitled ‘An examination of the role of business continuity in COVID-19 aftermath’, Jamal Elbaz and Salomée Ruel, through an empirical study of 322 French companies, propose to decode the way in which these companies prepare themselves, particularly in terms of risk management practices. This includes the way in which they deploy different measures to cope with this type of disaster, focusing on three main questions:
How has the COVID-19 pandemic affected companies’ business continuity practices and disaster preparedness?
How, in a pandemic context, can business continuity practices help companies improve their disaster preparedness?
And finally,
Do business continuity practices and disaster preparedness have a positive impact on companies’ financial performance?
Using structural equations to process their results, they show that business continuity practices have a positive and significant impact on disaster preparedness and corporate performance. The more experienced organisations are, in terms of disaster prevention programmes, the more mature they become in terms of disaster preparedness.
Managers can therefore understand that the development of business continuity practices, based on better information management, translates into improved corporate financial performance in the event of a crisis. As a dynamic capability, disaster preparedness is also a driver of financial performance. Deteriorated by the COVID-19 crisis, this dynamic capability does not seem to be sufficiently developed. This finding is particularly relevant for companies, who should therefore rapidly put in place organisational learning processes, for example, in the form of feedback recorded in a knowledge management system, to ensure that disaster preparedness is improved for future crises.
Environmental issues are becoming increasingly important. But this still raises a number of fundamental questions about how to integrate these constraints. Thus, Alexander Rapp, Adina Simonovic and Rudolph Large, in their article entitled ‘A case study-based analysis of environmental strategies among logistics service providers’, ask themselves and us about the ‘green’ thinking and dimensions of supply chains. Going beyond simple trophies rewarding environmental initiatives, they use the prism of logistics service providers to analyse ‘how to anchor the eco-responsible approach as a genuine strategic asset with competitive virtue’. A multiple-case study of eight German logistics service providers (LSPs) was used as the field of study (documentary analysis, questionnaires and semi-structured interviews transcribed and analysed). Top and middle management involved in their company’s environmental strategy were interviewed around three major questions:
What types of environmental strategy are LSPs currently pursuing?
How do these LSPs present coherent environmental strategies?
What effects have LSPs perceived while pursuing environmental strategies? What role do competitive advantages play?
Their findings show that LSPs need to pursue a coherent environmental strategy to generate competitive advantage, but one that is not based on lowering costs. The range of current eco-efficiency practices they employ encompasses many of the actions implemented by their competitors, which does not enable them to achieve real differentiation. Almost all the players analysed (with the exception of one) implement a similar approach, consisting of a set of eco-efficiency measures with almost immediate effect, to the detriment of more costly actions with more distant horizons. They conclude that LSPs that systematically pursue an environmental strategy based on lower costs are less likely to generate a competitive advantage than those adopting a hybrid or differentiation strategy.
In a completely different field, that of the event industry, Vincent Salaun offers us a logistical immersion and an exploration of the role of the logistics function in managing transitions in temporary organisations with his article entitled ‘Logistical transition in temporary organisations: the case of the event industry’. To do so, he draws on an empirical study conducted between 2016 and 2021, the fruit of participant and non-participant observations, at the heart of nine sporting (2 cases), musical (3 cases), cinematographic (1 case), popular festive (1 case) and entertainment (2 cases) events. These events ranged from two or three organising actors to nearly a hundred, with audiences ranging from 1,000 to over 300,000 participants.
To the question: ‘How can we characterise the transition phases in the life cycle of temporary organisations?’ Vincent Salaun reminds us of the problems faced by these temporary organisations, which gravitate around major events whose aim is to bring together, in a given space and for a given time, people who need a great degree of logistical support. If we go beyond the purely ‘festive’ dimension of the studied events, his presupposition is that logistics is no longer reduced to ‘facilities management’ but to one of the strategic functions of the event, since an analysis of the procedures developed by these events reveals that over three-quarters of them concern the management of the event and that of various flows. He delivers an interesting analysis illustrating temporary organisations as a global system of specific logistical chains that function through the use of artefacts and procedures from the past, then gradually disintegrate. This encourages the logistician to opt for a highly integrated supply chain, thanks to the processes implemented during the transition phases. He reminds us of the need to rapidly deploy complex supply chains capable of handling the massive, heterogeneous flows that constitute the core business of temporary organisations, thus facilitating interfacing between the various players and guaranteeing almost immediate logistical performance.
Finally, in their article ‘Analysis of agricultural distribution tensions in the construction of a channel: the case of a mountain farming area’, Virginie Noireaux and François Cassière give us an interesting insight into mountain farming and short supply chains, in particular by highlighting the difficulties encountered by these small agricultural players in building a collective logistics dynamic. At a time when short supply chains are enjoying unprecedented popularity, due both to sustainable consumer pressure and the improved quality of the products on offer, the aim of this article is ‘to identify the professional tensions, mainly of a logistical nature, between actors both in the preparatory phase for the development of a distribution channel and those that emerge during the construction of a new hybrid channel’.
Thus, they put the question of hybrid supply chains back at the heart of current debates. In the heart of a mountainous area in the centre of France, 22 players from the agricultural sector (mainly cattle breeders and producers of milk and its derivatives) gave their point of view. An analysis of their discourse reveals the existence of role tensions in all food supply chains, more in the achievement of results in terms of distribution than in the means of achieving them per se. Two scenarii are highlighted. For dairy produce, the organisation of supply chains around ‘Brands’ is a major facilitator in the construction of a channel, as they act as ‘unifying neutral values’. In the livestock sector, the construction of a logistical supply chain is more dependent on the ‘transformation’ links (slaughterhouses, cutting plants). However, the transformation of work content is creating major tensions for them, as the players are having to develop commercial skills which, in their view, are not part of their core business. Herein lies the paradox of these short circuits, which currently lack structure and organisation due to the small size of players who do not necessarily wish to increase their respective sizes, and who weigh up the risk of losing their identity in favour of a more efficient and collective supply chain.
Here, then, is some interesting material for you to read and analyse, illustrating some of the issues that animated the 14th Meeting of AIRL-SCM.