Having It All: Rigor Versus Relevance in Supply Chain Management Research‪.‬

Congratulations to Craig Carter, Lisa Ellram and Lutz Kaufmann as they embark on their ambitious repositioning of the Journal of Supply Chain Management. Their quest brings to mind the age-old discussion about rigor versus relevance in academic research, which is alive and well in the area of supply chain management research. The discussion goes something like this: supply chain management, by definition, is an applied research field, which is based in the real world. Without problems in real supply chains to study, there would not be a need for supply chain management research. Therefore, because supply chain management researchers study real problems and develop recommendations that are useful for supply chain professionals, their research is somehow of lesser quality than "pure" research that is based on advancing theory. Conversely, if academic researchers focus their efforts on "pure" and theoretically based research, they are rewarded by being able to publish it in geeky academic journals, and the perception seems to be, "the geekier, the better." Of course any self-respecting supply chain professional would not be caught dead reading a geeky academic journal, so any notion of relevance is sacrificed if we strive to do high-quality supply chain management research. This raises the intriguing question of who it is that we are targeting with our academic research? Is our goal to simply entertain other academic researchers? I hope not. I once heard a manager describe most academic research as "esoteric research written in arcane language and published in obscure journals, with no relevance for the real world." Is this the sort of goal that we had when we entered the academic world as idealistic Ph.D. candidates? What happened along the way to change our perspective?