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Introduction
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.
Essay Frontiers: A Call for Bold Ideas, New Voices, and New Directions in Logistics and SCM invites contributions that engage with this broader intellectual horizon. 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 (Queiroz, Fritz, & Gammelgaard, 2026).
We encourage submissions that combine intellectual ambition with conceptual clarity.
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.
This call explicitly welcomes cross-disciplinary engagement. 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. We seek essays that are rigorous, reflective, and bold, capable of not only interpreting the field's evolution but also actively shaping its future.
Reference:
Queiroz, M., Fritz, M., & Gammelgaard, B. (2026). Essay Frontiers–a new section in the International Journal of Logistics Management (IJLM). The International Journal of Logistics Management, 37(2), 257-265. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJLM-03-2026-785
List of Topic Areas
The following topics are examples to inspire submissions. We welcome other bold and unconventional ideas aligned with the spirit of Essay Frontiers.
- 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?
Guest Editors
Maciel Queiroz, FGV EAESP, Brazil, maciel.queiroz@fgv.br
Morgane Fritz, Excelia Business School, France, fritzm@excelia-group.com
Britta Gammelgaard, University of Southern Denmark, Denmark, blg@iti.sdu.dk
Submissions Information
This is a two-step submission process.
Step 1: Submit abstracts via email to the guest editors’ team. (max 300 words, see the main requirements of the essay proposal structure in Queiroz, M., Fritz, M., & Gammelgaard, B. (2026)).
Step 2: Submit the full essay (for accepted abstracts) via https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/ijlm
Authors should select (from the drop-down menu) the special issue title at the appropriate step in the submission process, i.e. in response to “Essay Frontiers: A Call for Bold Ideas, New Voices, and New Directions in Logistics and SCM”.
Submitted articles must not have been previously published, nor should they be under consideration for publication anywhere else, while under review for this journal.
Key Deadlines
Opening date for abstract submissions: 21/05/2026
Closing date for abstract submissions: 30/09/2026
Email for abstract submissions: maciel.queiroz@fgv.br; fritzm@excelia-group.com; blg@iti.sdu.dk
Opening date for manuscript submissions: 31/11/2026
Closing date for manuscript submissions: 30/04/2027
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