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Introduction
When theoreticians, researchers, and practitioners in a discipline gather to discuss a shared topic, they expect, quite reasonably, to share a common language. They expect key terms to have at least a shared nominal definition and prefer to have a shared real or formal definition. Yet in the field we call “supply chain management (SCM),” we find no such shared definition, nominal, real, or formal. Even the Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals (CSCMP) offers its definition with the caveat: “The supply chain management (SCM) profession has continued to change and evolve to fit the needs of the growing global supply chain. With the supply chain covering a broad range of disciplines, the definition of what is a supply chain can be unclear” (CSCMP, 2016). The purpose of this research is to gather the current definitions of SCM in practical and analytical usage, to develop standards for assessing definitions and to apply these standards to the most readily available definitions of the term.
Does the lack of a clear, common definition matter? Key researchers have thought so. For example, in 2008, the late Dr Don Bowersox dressed down an audience of academics at a conference in Pensacola, FL, for failing to come together on a common understanding of the field. He was preceded on the stage by another academician who closed his part of the program with “[…] logistics, supply chain management, or whatever this is we’re talking about,” or words to that effect. Instead of his planned talk, Bowersox delivered a strong message, summed up as this:” If you, as the academic leaders of this field, don’t know what you’re talking about, how is anyone else supposed to know?” We sent this summary to several attendees at that conference and all agreed with it (Keller, 2016).
Other researchers have made the same argument in the process of discussing SCM definitions or developing definitions of their own (Larson and Rogers, 1998; Ellram and Cooper, 2014; Skjoett-Larsen and Bagchi, 2005; Lambert et al., 1998; Rossetti and Dooley, 2010). In this analysis, we accept the notion that a consensus definition of SCM is necessary, that we at least need a systematic approach to defining the term for each circumstance. But rather than speculate on what...