Companies around the world need to reconcile the need to differentiate their offerings and remain entrepreneurial in a competitive environment while also running extremely efficient and effective operations. Surprisingly, however, limited studies have provided a synthesis and overview of existing research exploring important links between the entrepreneurship and supply chain management (SCM) fields. In this paper, we aim to address this issue by developing a systematic review of research exploring the link between entrepreneurial orientation (EO) and SCM, while synthesizing the most relevant findings in this intersection. We also aim to promote the development of this topic by providing relevant future research directions. To do so, we conducted a systematic review on the topic of EO published in SCM journals from 1989 to April 2020. We summarize 14 relevant articles on EO in SCM and conclude that research joining these fields is surprisingly scant despite the development of both EO and SCM literature over extended periods of time. We find that although existing research recognizes that entrepreneurial behavior is key for a successful supply chain orientation and to develop more efficient and value-creating supply chains, theoretical development and empirical examination in specific supply chains and multiple industries is required. We uncover and propose specific opportunities to advance this research effort.
PurposeDespite the abundance of small-scale farms in the USA and their importance for both rural economic development and food availability, the extensive research on small business management and entrepreneurship has mostly neglected the agricultural context, leaving many of these farms' business challenges unexplored. The authors focus on informing a specific decision faced by small farm managers: selling directly to consumers (i.e. farmer's markets) versus selling through aggregators. By collecting historical data and a series of interviews with industry experts, the authors employ simulation methodology to offer a framework that advises how small-scale farmers can allocate their product across these two channels to increase revenue in a given season. The results, which are relevant for operations management, small business management and entrepreneurship literature, can help small-scale farmers improve their performance and compete against their larger counterparts.Design/methodology/approachThe authors rely on historical and interview data from key industry players (an aggregator and a small farm manager) to design a simulation analysis that determines which factors influence season-long farm revenue performance under varying strategies of channel allocation and commodity production.FindingsThe model suggests that farm managers should plan to evenly split their production between the two distribution channels, but if an even split is not possible, they should plan to keep a larger percentage in the nonaggregator (farmers' market/direct) channel. Further, the authors find that farmers can benefit significantly from a strong aggregator channel customer base, which suggests that farmers should promote and advertise the aggregator channel even if they only use it for a limited amount of their product.Originality/valueThe authors integrate small business management and operations management literature to study a widely understudied context and present practical implications for the performance of small-scale farms.
Based on recent viral transmission events in the swine species, we present a new framework to implement and execute tabu search (TS). The framework mimics the gradual evolutionary process observed when certain flu viruses move from one host population to another. It consists of three steps: (1) executing TS on a smaller subset of the original problem, (2) using one of its promising solutions as an initial solution for a marginally larger problem, and (3) repeating this process until the original problem is reached and solved. Numerical experiments conducted with randomly-generated vehicle routing instances demonstrate interesting results.
Firms that span a wide array of locations, cultures, and industries have to interact with one another and make efforts to effectively coordinate their supply chains. This has led the concept of proximity to be increasingly important in different streams of literature. However, proximity in the context of supply chain represents an important construct that lacks a clear conceptualization and needs further research. In this paper, we contribute to the body of literature on proximity as well as that of supply chain by proposing an extension to existing proximity frameworks and incorporating a new dimension of supply chain proximity. We conduct a systematic review of supply chain and other relevant literatures, summarize key findings, and present a new multidimensional framework of proximity, inclusive of supply chain management. We discuss methodological issues, and outline research suggestions for different streams of literature.
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