In response to the increasing difficulty of obtaining high quality peer reviews, our invited paper describes the concept of review avoidance and why this phenomenon occurs. In reaffirming the professional responsibilities and potential benefits of reviewing, we also emphasize the interdependent nature of the ideal peer review process. We suggest that the review process is a three-way street where the respective roles and responsibilities of authors, editors and editorial teams, and reviewers are inextricably linked. We present thematic illustrations of undesirable reviewer comments, and a brief synthesis of broad themes in the literature on high-quality reviewing. The synthesis is complemented by a master reviewer's fine-grained perspective on crafting high quality reviews. A final Appendix presents additional sources that may be informative for prospective reviewers, submitting authors, and those mentors and colleagues who may wish to provide guidance and training to them.

Purpose The purpose of this paper and the contribution to this special issue is to build on Kim and Watkins’ (2018) recent finding that ‘leaders mentor and coach those they lead’ is the item in the Dimensions of the Learning Organization Questionnaire (DLOQ) that is most highly-correlated with performance. Given the criticality of providing strategic leadership for learning and, more specifically, the consistent associations between leaders who mentor and coach and work-related performance outcomes, a better understanding of the associations between the learning organization concept and managerial coaching is warranted. Watkins and Kim (2018, p. 22) contend that ‘future directions for learning organization research include a search for the elusive interventions that would create a learning organization’. In response to this call for research, a research agenda for assessing managerial coaching as a learning organization (LO) intervention is proposed. Design/methodology/approach This conceptual paper briefly reviews literature on the learning organization and the DLOQ instrument, followed by a more in-depth review of the managerial coaching literature and suggestions for how future research could be conducted that more closely integrates these two concepts. Findings Existing literature suggests that to ‘provide strategic leadership for learning’, a dimension in the DLOQ, is one of the most pivotal dimensions for creating learning cultures that build learning organizations. Specifically, an item within this dimension, ‘leaders who mentor and coach’ has been recently identified as one of the most critical aspects associated with strategic leadership for learning. Originality/value The extant managerial coaching literature offers a solid foundation for more closely integrating and mainstreaming the developmental intervention of managerial coaching into learning organizations. Directions for future research that identifies fine-grained perspectives of the discrete facets of managerial coaching in learning organization contexts are suggested.

PurposeSupply chain management (SCM) proficiency is generally associated with superior business performance. Yet, SCM research continues to focus predominantly on the performance of individual firms, rather than on the collective performance of multiple supply chain participants as espoused by the extended enterprise (EE) concept. In response to calls for quantitative studies that examine the collective performance of multiple supply chain participants, this research study compares the combined performance of triads comprising focal firms recognized for their relative SCM proficiency and their upstream (supplier) and downstream (customer) supply chain partners with that of their close industry competitors' triads.Design/methodology/approachThe triadic, longitudinal examination of multiple supply chain participants' collective performance utilized archival financial data of the period 2007–2017 from the Compustat database and the supply chain (SPLC) function of Bloomberg.FindingsFindings of this study indicated that supply chain triads that included focal firms recognized for their relative SCM proficiency experienced significantly lower sales and general administrative expenses and significantly higher productivity, return on assets and profitability over time than their close industry competitors' triads. However, contrary to expectations, the performance advantages identified did not extend to revenue growth.Research limitations/implicationsSupply chain triads cannot fully represent entire supply chains or EEs. However, this study’s triadic analysis can be viewed as a practically achievable proxy for further validating the EE concept. Moreover, based on assertions that triadic studies are suitable for SCM research and on empirical studies that consistently show individual firms recognized for their relative SCM proficiency outperform competitors, the authors contend that the study’s findings appropriately corroborate the value of the EE concept.Practical implicationsBecause such empirical evidence is so rare, the consistent, collective performance advantages identified in this study should be highly significant to managers.Originality/valueRobust, longitudinal evidence that supply chain triads which include focal firms recognized for relative SCM proficiency collectively outperform their close industry competitors' triads extends generally accepted associations between SCM proficiency and business performance, suggesting that the application of extended resource-based view (ERBV) in supply chain contexts warrants further examination and further substantiates the efficacy of the EE concept.

As consumers increasingly choose to make their purchases from the comfort of their own homes rather than to visit brick-and-mortar stores, the need for fast-moving fulfillment and distribution centers (DCs) is proliferating. The Amazon effect that is so significantly changing the way people shop is also associated with an acute shortage of blue-collar workers in the retail-distribution industry. Firms’ traditional responses to the scarcity of warehouse labor are to increase hourly wages and to integrate automation and robotic product-fulfillment technologies. We identify an innovative human-capital-management approach that provides a timely, alternative solution to this important business problem. We present anecdotal, descriptive overviews of firms that are implementing blue ocean strategy (BOS) to proactively hire and assimilate workers with disabilities into their DCs. We also identify effective practices for partnering with local disability-service agencies to ensure that proactively hiring warehouse workers with disabilities creates mutual value and improves productivity. Finally, we discuss corporate social responsibility and the social impact of successfully hiring and assimilating workers with disabilities, with the intent of encouraging firms in the retail-fulfillment industry to view the traditional business problem of hiring warehouse workers from a new and alternative perspective.

PurposeOngoing deliberation about how research productivity should be measured is exacerbated by extensive disparity between the number of citations for scholarly works reported by commercial academic search engines and Google Scholar (GS), the premier web crawling service for discovering research citations. Disparities identified in citation comparison studies have also led to disagreement about the value of the higher number of citations for social sciences and business scholarly articles consistently reported by GS. The purpose of this paper is to extend previous database citation comparison studies by manually analyzing a sample of unique GS citations to a leading operations management journal (i.e. citations found only in GS and not the commercial search engines) to reveal just where these additional citations are coming from.Design/methodology/approachIn addition to comparing citation counts for the three databases, unique GS citation data for the sample of journal articles was manually captured and reviewed. The authors’ approach provides a much more in-depth examination of the provenance of GS citations than is found in previous studies.FindingsThe findings suggest that concerns about the value of unique GS citations may not be warranted since the document types for the unique GS citing documents identified in the analysis are dominated by familiar scholarly formats. Predominantly authentic and validated journal publications, dissertations, conference papers, and book and book chapters accounted for the large majority of the unique GS citations analyzed.Practical implicationsThe study lends further credence to contentions that the use of citations reported in GS is appropriate for evaluating research impact in disciplines where other formats beyond the English-language journal article are valued.Originality/valueDeveloping a more informed understanding of the provenance of unique GS citations in the authors’ field is important because many scholars not only aspire to publish in elite journals with high impact factors based on citation counts provided by commercial databases to demonstrate quality, but also report the larger number of citations for their publications that are reported by GS to demonstrate impact. The in-depth manual analysis suggests that GS provides a more nuanced and comprehensive representation of research impact and international scope than the commercial databases.

Contemporary research highlights multiple societal and environmental benefits in addition to potential economic advantages associated with renewable energy (RE) utilization. As federal and state incentives for investments in RE technologies become more prevalent, RE sources represent increasingly viable alternatives to established fossil fuel energy. RE utilization is recognized as a key component of “green” product innovation that helps firms reduce the environmental impact of production processes and diminish their ecological footprints and energy consumption. Yet, despite consistent evidence that corporate sustainability initiatives are favorably associated with firm performance, the limited research that examines associations between RE initiatives and firm performance yields mixed results and an explicit link has yet to be established. Drawing on the natural resource-based view of the firm, we examine the association between RE utilization and firm financial performance over time. Annual ROI, Tobin’s Q , and operating margin for large U.S. firms identified as exceptional users of RE in the EPA’s Fortune 500 Top Green Power Partners list are compared with their respective industry medians over a 7-year period (2007–2013) and post hoc bootstrapping and sensitivity analyses are performed to further validate the study findings. Our research advances current knowledge about the influence of RE utilization by demonstrating that top RE user firms consistently generated superior financial performance compared to their industry competitors. As such, the study findings lend credence to the existence of a business case that complements the societal and environmental benefits of RE utilization.

Despite growing utilization of scholarly metrics to assess faculty research output, quality, impact, and productivity, the marketing discipline has yet to develop a comprehensive, generalizable benchmark for assessing scholar productivity. This study builds on and extends previous productivity benchmark studies by examining a considerably larger and more representative sample of over 1,000 marketing scholars from U.S. research-intensive schools and by assessing marketing scholar productivity over complete careers rather than for specific periods of time. Consistent with the objectives of benchmarking, the study findings enable educational administrators and faculty themselves to see exactly where a particular marketing scholar’s productivity falls within the range of scores.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to create an instrument for conducting future supply chain transparency research by developing and validating a measure of supplier transparency. Specifically, the research develops a two-dimensional measure of supplier transparency that builds on previous studies that independently examine visibility and traceability in supply chain management (SCM)/logistics. Design/methodology/approach The scale development process is carried out over three stages (item generation, scale purification, scale validation). Survey methods are used with two separate data collection phases involving a total of 358 managers from multiple and diverse industries. Findings The new supplier transparency measure is a concise, two-dimensional scale that has the potential for significant usage in the development and testing of SCM theory. Research limitations/implications This study implemented a purposefully general sampling procedure. However, different industries may have additional, specific constraints regarding what it means to be a transparent supplier. Additional opportunities for future research include applying the new supplier transparency measure to examine supply chain frameworks, regulatory compliance, supply chain relationships and the implementation of information technology. Practical implications Firms are under increasing pressure to be transparent about partner sourcing, resource utilization and other transactional issues related to the products and processes in their supply chains. The new measure may be utilized to address these issues as well as the interaction between supply chain operations and stakeholders by facilitating a quantitative assessment of supplier transparency. Originality/value Drawing on the established constructs of supply chain visibility and traceability, a measure of supplier transparency is developed, supported by a review of the literature, input from subject matter experts and interviews with supply chain managers. Suggestions are made for future validation of supplier transparency within established supply chain frameworks.

Purpose In response to calls for the identification of approaches that promote frontline employee (FLE) engagement, the purpose of this paper is to extend the current understanding of the influence of work design by testing competing mediating models that assess job resource and social exchange aspects of work design as either intermediate or antecedent mechanisms in reciprocal social exchanges between service provider firms and FLEs. Moderating effects of interactions between job resources and organizational support and customer focus on engagement are also assessed. Design/methodology/approach A questionnaire is administered to 525 FLEs from multiple service industries. Structural equation modeling is used to test hypotheses and examine their robustness relative to competing models. Common method bias is assessed using a confirmatory factor analysis marker variable technique. Findings Organizational support and customer focus are identified as proximal mediating social exchange aspects of work design that, consistent with role-specific conceptualizations of engagement, differentially influence FLE job and organization engagement. Practical implications The study findings offer insight about how firms can implement job resource and social exchange aspects of work design to favorably influence FLE engagement. Originality/value Services marketing research continues to focus more on service recipients than on FLE service providers. The examination of reciprocal social exchanges between service provider firms and FLEs sheds light on the complexities associated with exploiting aspects of work design to more effectively engage FLEs.

Purpose Services marketing research continues to be largely focused on firms’ reactive interactions for recovering from service failure rather than on proactive customer interactions that may prevent service failure from occurring in the first place. Building on previous studies that assess the efficacy of implementing proactive interaction in service provision contexts, the purpose of this paper is to compare the influences of proactive interaction to prevent service failure and reactive interaction to correct service failure on customer emotion and patronage behavior. Since proactive interaction for service failure prevention is a relatively underexplored and resource-intensive approach, the authors also assess the moderating influences of customer and firm-related characteristics. Design/methodology/approach The study hypotheses are tested with survey data from two scenario-based experiments conducted in a retail setting. Findings The findings reveal that customers prefer service providers that take the initiative to get to them before they have to initiate contact for themselves. The findings also identify the moderating influences of relationship quality, situational involvement, and contact person status and motive. Originality/value The research contributes to the development of service provision theory and practice by expanding on previous studies which report that proactive efforts to prepare customers for the adverse effects of service failure are favorably received. The results also shed light on moderating factors that may further inform the exploitation of resource-intensive proactive interaction for service failure prevention. An agenda is proposed to stimulate future research on proactive customer interaction to prevent service failure in service provision contexts.

Strategic collaboration within and between firms is consistently associated with superior performance. Balancing supply and demand so that firms have more of what customers want and less of what they do not want is also recognized as a means of improving customer satisfaction and firm performance. Recent studies indicate that internal sales and operations planning (S&OP) enables demand and supply integration. However, successful S&OP implementations are relatively rare because the process is not well understood. Extant S&OP research is primarily focused on describing stage models, technology implementation, and outcomes of S&OP rather than on identifying antecedent factors like organizational orientations that may facilitate effective S&OP. Building on the VRIO version of the resource-based view (RBV) of the firm, this chapter develops a conceptual framework of organizational orientation antecedents of S&OP. Our framework proposes that a series of complementary organizational orientations (service orientation, internal market orientation, financial orientation, and supply-chain orientation) collectively promote organizational culture that enables S&OP.

Firms strive to identify interventions that promote customer contact employee (CCE) well-being by mitigating job stress to encourage better service experiences for customers. Drawing on equity theory, this research examines the influences of alternative rewarding approaches on CCE job stress and work-related attitudes, by assessing the effects of intrinsic (social recognition) and extrinsic (monetary) rewarding on CCE job stress, commitment to the organization, and customer orientation. Results of a survey of 220 CCEs from multiple service organizations indicate that social recognition reduces CCE job stress but that, contrary to expectations, monetary rewarding increases it. Moreover, satisfaction with pay has a greater influence on CCE customer orientation than social recognition.

Supply chain integration (SCI) is recognized as strategic process management that can be instrumental for creating positional advantages associated with improved firm performance. However, despite rigorous execution, recent meta-analyses derive different conclusions about the benefits of SCI. We propose that these inconsistencies may be associated with selection bias, failure to consider the mediating routes by which SCI affects financial performance, and lack of investigation of moderators. To address these issues, we apply positional advantage theory and the resource-based view, and focus on mitigating the potential selection bias by aggregating findings from 170 previous investigations in a comprehensive meta-analysis, to examine how discrete dimensions of SCI enhance firm financial performance through three types of intermediate firm performance. The moderating effects of time, relationship quality, and national culture are also assessed. The findings confirm that each dimension of SCI indeed improves financial performance. However, contrary to expectations, relational and strategic types of intermediate performance associated with superior customer value positional advantage have stronger mediating effects than operational performance associated with lower cost positional advantage. In addition, time, relationship quality, and collectivist national culture strengthen the associations between some dimensions of SCI and firm performance. Our study findings are reconciled with those from recent meta-analytic studies, and implications arising from our conclusions that may inform practice about how to effectively leverage SCI are presented.

Purpose– The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship between being a “great place to work” (GPTW) and firm performance. While lists such as the “Fortune 100 best places to work” were initially regarded solely as publicity vehicles for ranked firms, researchers have since tried to untangle the relationship between being a GPTW and firm performance, often by focussing on HRM systems and practices. In contrast, the study focusses on the valuable, rare, costly to imitate, and organization-exploitability aspects of being a trustworthy employer, place where workers take pride in their work and enjoy the people with whom they work.Design/methodology/approach– This study uses four distinct samples of firms drawn from Fortune’s best companies to work for,Glassdoor.com’sEmployees’ Choice Awards, Careerbliss.com’s 50 Happiest Companies in America, and Achievers.com’s 50 Most Engaged Workplaces Awards databases in a longitudinal design to compare performance attributes of listed firms to their respective industry peer groups.Findings– Being a GPTW is associated with greater productivity, growth potential, and higher operating profits.Research limitations/implications– Some GPTW firms are privately held and were excluded from analysis.Practical implications– Rather than focussing on individual HRM practices and techniques, employers may realize greater performance improvements by focussing on building a reputation as a trustworthy employer and fostering an environment where employees take pride in their work and enjoy working with each other.Originality/value– Other GPTW studies have focussed on HRM practices as antecedents to performance outcomes, which may not accurately reflect the attributes of the GPTW construct. This study focusses squarely on the underlying attributes of being a GPTW: employer trustworthiness, worker pride, and camaraderie and how they affect firm performance.

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to bring awareness to the logistics and supply chain management (L/SCM) community's broken review process.Design/methodology/approach - The authors diagnose some of the core problems that limit the L/SCM community from disseminating high-quality research in a timely manner.Findings - Problems attributable to authors, reviewers, and editors are described, and recommendations for each review process participant are provided.Originality/value - This editorial provides a call for further discussion and action in terms of how the community can improve the contribution to knowledge and society.

Purpose – After 40 years, IJPDLM received its first impact factor from Web of Science in 2010. This anniversary editorial provides a retrospective bibliometric assessment of IJPDLM over its initial five years as a Web of Science journal (2011-2015). First, IJPDLM’s citation metrics are compared to those for the Web of Science journal subject category of Management. Next, IJPDLM’s most cited articles, best papers and special issues together with the international diversity of the journal’s author base from 2011 to 2015 are reviewed. The analysis also presents the journals that cite IJPDLM most frequently, as well as the journals most frequently cited in IJPDLM. Finally, IJPDLM is compared to peer journals in the logistics and SCM field on various scholarly metrics including impact factor, five-year impact factor, h5-index, number of citations received and self-citation rate. The paper aims to discuss these issues. Design/methodology/approach – Retrospective bibliometric analysis of IJPDLM from 2011 to 2015. Findings – Boosted by the journal’s admission to Web of Science in 2010, IJPDLM has made steady progress toward fulfilling the mission of providing its constituents with timeliness, inclusiveness and impact. Practical implications – The comparison of IJPDLM’s scholarly metrics with those of peer journals and journals in the Web of Science Management category will be of interest and value to logistics and SCM researchers. Originality/value – The retrospective overview and celebration of IJPDLM’s progress over the last five years and future directions will be of interest to the journal’s stakeholders and prospective authors.

Relationship marketing is increasingly recognized by both practitioners and academics as an effective means for retailers to attract and retain customers and gain a competitive advantage in the competitive retail environment (e.g., Bagozzi, 1995; Berry, 1995; De Wulf, Odekerken-Schröder, & Iacobucci, 2001; Palmatier et al., 2009; Sheth & Parvatiyar, 1995). While various relationship investment strategies have been identified and shown to affect firm relational performance outcomes, there has been a dearth of studies on the value of proactive interaction and the issues related to implementing it, leading to calls for research in this area (Challagalla, Venkatesh, & Kohli, 2009; DeWitt & Brady, 2003; Palmatier et al., 2006). This study addresses this gap by examining whether it is better to “get to customers before they get to you” through an investigation of the relative effect of proactive and reactive interaction in retail settings. This study also investigates the mechanism by which a proactive interaction may achieve higher levels of firm performance. Several authors stress that relationship marketing practices are not effective in every situation (Challagalla et al., 2009; De Wulf et al., 2001; Kalwani & Narayandas, 1995). Therefore, moderating roles of firm- and customer-related factors on relationship interaction effectiveness are also proposed and investigated to better understand the specific situations in which proactive interactions may be most effective. The proposed hypotheses are tested using two scenario-based experiments in a retail context. This study is important for theory because it adds to the relationship investment literature by proposing and empirically assessing why and how proactive and reactive interaction strategies differ in their efficacy and by examining boundary conditions under which proactive interactions may be more effective. It is equally important for practice because it provides retail organizations with actionable strategies for building better relationships with their customers and developing a decision tree based on which moderators are useful and viable for which customers and situations.

Despite space limitations and inventory costs, retailers frequently increase product assortments to attract more customers, However, there is an ongoing debate in the literature and in the retailing industry about whether “more is better” or “less is better” in terms of product assortments. Given that understanding customers’ perceptions and preferences about product assortments is complex and challenging (Grewal and Levy 2007; Mantrala et al. 2009), this study addresses a gap in the literature by examining situational and individual factors that may moderate the choice overload effect. Shopping enjoyment and time pressure are assessed as potential moderating variables of the relationship between product assortment size and customer choice overload. An experimental research design is used to survey 164 participants about their affective responses (i.e., feeling overwhelmed, frustrated, confused, and regretful when dealing with a purchase) to either a large assortment (24 items) or a small assortment (4 items). ANCOVA analyses are performed on the data. The results show that, as product assortment increases, choice overload is more common among customers (1) who enjoy shopping less and (2) who are under time pressure. The findings may be helpful for retailers in understanding the characteristics of their customers and designing product assortments to offer better shopping experiences.

Purpose – As global supply networks proliferate, the strategic significance of supply chain risk management (SCRM) – defined as the identification, evaluation, and management of supply chain-related risks to reduce overall supply chain vulnerability – also increases. Yet, despite consistent evidence that firm performance is enhanced by appropriate fit between strategy and context, extant SCRM research focusses more on identifying sources of supply chain risk, types of SCRM strategy, and performance implications associated with SCRM than on the relative efficacy of alternative primary supply chain risk mitigation strategies in different risk contexts. Drawing on contingency theory, a conceptual framework is proposed that aligns well-established aspects of SCRM to present a rubric for matching primary alternative supply chain risk mitigation strategies (redundancy and flexibility) with particular risk contexts (severity and probability of risk occurrence). The paper aims to discuss these issues. Design/methodology/approach – Conceptual paper. Findings – The proposed framework addresses supply chain managers’ need for a basic rubric to help them choose and implement risk mitigation approaches. The framework may also prove helpful for introducing business students to the fundamentals of SCRM. Originality/value – The framework and associated research propositions provide a theoretically grounded basis for managing the firm’s portfolio of potential supply chain risks by applying appropriate primary risk mitigation strategies based on the specific context of each risk rather than taking a “one size fits all” approach to risk mitigation. An agenda for progressing research on contingency-based approaches to SCRM is also presented.