Maciel Queiroz, FGV EAESP

Morgane Fritz, Excelia Business School

Britta Gammelgaard, University of Southern Denmark

Logistics and supply chain management (L/SCM) have advanced through analytical rigor and empirical refinement. However, the contemporary landscape, shaped by geopolitical shifts, digital transformation, climate pressures, and evolving societal expectations, requires more than incremental extensions of existing models. It calls for a reconsideration of the assumptions, values, and conceptual boundaries that underpin the field. Many of the most pressing challenges in L/SCM today are not only empirical, but also normative, philosophical, and inherently interdisciplinary.

This special issue seeks essays that move beyond established paradigms and offer reflective, provocative, and conceptually grounded perspectives that offer new lenses and open new directions for research and practice. The objective is to complement empirical work by fostering ideas that challenge, reframe, and extend our understanding of L/SCM.

Essays should articulate a coherent argument, engage with relevant scholarly conversations, and demonstrate originality, while remaining open to alternative forms of reasoning and expression. Contributions may draw on theory, practice, or lived experience, but should aim to question dominant assumptions, surface overlooked tensions, or propose new ways of thinking.

L/SCM intersects with organization studies, strategy, international business, human resource management, and entrepreneurship, among other fields. Engaging with these perspectives enables richer understandings of issues such as power, governance, labor, innovation, and institutional complexity in L/SCM.

This is an invitation to think differently. Essays should be rigorous, reflective, and bold, capable of not only interpreting the field's evolution but also actively shaping its future.

Potential topics

• Algorithmic management and the reconfiguration of work in logistics
• Supply chains as political and strategic infrastructures
• Entrepreneurial supply chains in contexts of institutional fragility
• Efficiency versus dignity: ethical boundaries of automation
• Decolonizing supply chain theory and practice
• Beyond resilience: strategic adaptation, transformation, and fragility
• Platformization and ecosystem competition in logistics
• Invisible labor and precarity in digitally mediated supply chains
• Sustainability, legitimacy, and organizational narratives
• The role of human resources in supply chain management
• Temporal trade-offs: speed, flexibility, and human well-being
• Culture, identity, and coordination in global supply networks
• Human–AI collaboration and decision authority in SCM
• Moral responsibility and accountability in complex supply networks
• Business model innovation in circular and regenerative supply chains
• Reimagining SCM theory: integration, borrowing, or paradigm shift?

Timeline

• May 21, 2026: Opening date for abstract submissions
• September 30, 2026: Closing date for abstract submissions
• November 30, 2026: Opening date for manuscript submissions
• April 30, 2027: Closing date for manuscript submissions