It is with great sorrow and sadness that the IPSERA community has learned of the passing of one of our great founders and incredible members of our community. Professor Alessandro Ancarani, former President of IPSERA, and Professor Attila Chikán, IPSERA Lifetime Achievement Award winner, have written fitting tributes.

Mario Raffa,  former full professor of Management Engineering at the Federico II University of Naples, passed away on 10 March 2022 at the age of 75. During his long and distinguished career, Professor Raffa has influenced generations of students, scholars and professionals with his teaching skills and ground-breaking scientific research on innovation and entrepreneurship. He developed his university career in Italy and abroad. In particular, he spent periods of study and research in UK, United States, Japan, as well as in numerous European countries, focusing on the relationship between new technologies, entrepreneurship and organizational change both in private companies and in the Public Administration. In Italy, he paid particular attention to the Campania region with reference to the transformation phenomena of its production system. This attention has led him to actively participate in the political life of his city, also assuming the position of Councillor for Development of the Municipality of Naples from May 2008 to June 2011. Mario Raffa was a key figure for Management Engineering in Italy. At the Federico II University of Naples, he held, among others, the positions of President of the Board of the Degree Course in Management Engineering (from 1995 to 2002), Director of the Department of Management Engineering (from 2000-2005), Coordinator of the PhD in Management Engineering for several years, Scientific Director of ODISSEO, Observatory of Technological Innovation and Organization. From 2003 to 2008 he was Director of the Start Cup Federico II; in 2007 he was Scientific Director of the PNI-National Award for Innovation. His research activity - for which he has received several international awards - concerns small innovative companies, subcontracting relationships, industrial organization, entrepreneurship. He was a member and collaborator of numerous national and international scientific associations including the Italian Association of Management Engineering (AiIG) - of which he was President in the two-year period 2003-2005, the International Council for Small Business (ICSB), the European Council for Small Business and Entrepreneurship (ECSB), International Purchasing & Supply Education & Research Association (IPSERA) - of which he was one of the founders and the first promoter, as well as chair and co-coordinator of two annual conferences (Ischia, 1997; Naples, 2012). He has been a member of the editorial board of numerous national and international journals including the Journal of Small Business, the Journal of Purchasing and Supply Management, the Journal of Small Business Management. Since 2009 he has been the first Italian to receive the prestigious White Wilford Fellow nominated by the ICSB - International Council for Small Business, for scientific, cultural and political merits on the issues of entrepreneurship and the birth and development of new businesses. Since 2016 he has been the first Italian to be awarded the European Council for Small Business and Entrepreneurship Fellows for merits in the field of research / teaching in entrepreneurship. Mario Raffa was a person of great culture and sensitivity, kind and affable and a dear friend of many colleagues. He leaves a void but his lessons and dedication to scientific research will remain forever. Professor Chikán's Tribute: I join Professor Ancarani in praising the achievements of Mario and his enormous contribution to global knowledge both with his research and education. He was one of the leading figures of the generation which established global cooperation in purchasing and supply research, most prominently by founding and strengthening IPSERA. At my invitation he was a frequent speaker of the IFPSM Summer Schools at the turn of the millennium and always fascinated participants by his professionalism and humanity. He was a true European by culture and manner. I feel lucky to have known him. RIP. Professor Emeritus Attila Chikán Co-President of HALPIM Lifetime Achievement Awardee of IPSERA

This year's conference will be held in Sweden and hosted by Jönköping University.

The conference  theme aims to build bridges rather than walls. We encourage boundary bridging research over borders, cross disciplines, between industry and academia and more!

Conference homepage: https://ipsera.com/IPSERA2022

This workshop aims to bring together scholars and selected professionals interested in Purchasing and Supply Management (PSM) (or procurement) to discuss the emerging topic of sourcing from startups.

The importance of sourcing innovative technologies and knowledge from suppliers is well-established. A more recent challenge concerns how to scout innovations from non-traditional suppliers, including suppliers from outside existing supply networks. In this context, sourcing from innovative startup companies is emerging as an opportunity but presents new challenges and therefore new ways of managing the sourcing process. Not surprisingly, this is rapidly becoming a key research theme in purchasing and innovation.

This workshop is part of the IPSERA Special Interest Group (SIG) on Purchasing and Innovation and is hosted by Audencia Business School and the Axys chair of Purchasing and Digital Innovation. The event will be online.

Schedule March 9, 2022: 14:00 - 17:00 CET

> Opening and Welcome -  Thomas Johnsen and Francois Constant

> Academic Keynote - Stephan Wagner, Professor at ETH Zurich 

> Practitioner Keynote 1 -  Fabian Lampe, Head of Procurement at Archlet

> Practitioner Keynote 2 - Laurent Kinet, co-founder & CEO at Novable

> Small Group Discussions -  Leonardo Marquez

Register here:      https://ipsera.com/event-4657414

Once registered, you will receive the event link one day before the event.

"Since attending my first IPSERA conference in Nantes in 2013, I have been honoured to be part of this vibrant, friendly, and supportive community. With my new role on the Executive Committee I have taken over responsibility for IPSERA news from the wonderful, Nadine Kiratli. Please do send items for the newsletters to news@ipsera.com and also make use of our increasing social media presence on Twitter, Linkedin and Facebook."

You are invited to join the forthcoming IPSERA Workshop 'Towards Systemic Change' on 27th January at 15.00 GMT, 16.00 CET. This IJOPM special issue information session is free and open to everyone so please extend the invitation and invite your networks.

In this workshop, we will discuss how operations and supply chain management of socially driven enterprises contribute to change making. 

Agenda:

• Introduction to the IJOPM special issue (Annachiara Longoni, ESADE)
• Basics of social impact supply chains  (Mellie Pullman, University of Groningen)
• The concept of systemic change (Davide Luzzini, EADA)
• The social entrepreneur perspective (Gemma Sunyer, Fundación Ana Bella)

Useful links:

• IJOPM special issue
• IPSERA will host a conference special track. Check the conference program for updates.
  

Dear IPSERA friends and family,
We cordially invite you to the forthcoming IPSERA workshop on Internet of Things (IoT).

This workshop gives our members the opportunity to present papers and ideas; to receive feedback ahead of the conference. There will be no invited speakers, there will be no keynote speeches. The microphone will be yours!

Our future IoT events will offer various formats, e.g., panels, keynote discussions, but this November workshop is research driven and we would like to hear your projects, research, and ideas.

Those that wish to present a paper shall get in touch with hlegenvre@eipm.org by the 8th of November.

Registration is open to the IPSERA members. You are wholeheartedly encouraged to present your work, take part in the discussion, and help our community grow.

IoT is about curiosity, openness, and friendship

Back in 2017, IPSERA conference was in Hungary. We had our first SIG meeting and our first PDW on the internet of things. We felt that we needed to bring together members of the IPSERA community together. And the intent was nothing less than grandiose. It was expressed in a short opening we wrote and shared at that time

 “The Internet of thing (IOT) will bring a tectonic change in the structure of industries in the next 20 years. More disruptions and value chains reconfigurations must be anticipated. We have only seen the first sparks of a broad transformation. Many industry architectures will be significantly and sometime radically transformed”

And we claimed that we needed to study how “PSM functions will evolve on the forefront of such business-critical changes.”

Since 2017, we have pursued our exchanges through physical and virtual sessions; we discussed many times the scope of the SIG and we kept it rather open. We are interested in the role of PSM in sourcing digital capabilities and we are also interested in how digital technologies shape PSM organisations.

Through SIG & PDW we want to stimulate the international exchange of curiosity and experience among young and experienced researchers. The regular, open and friendly exchange of research approaches, methods, views and early research results on this complex topic, which will have a lasting impact on and change purchasing, appears to be increasingly important for participants to strive for open and holistic views. In addition, the early exchange of research projects stimulated and consolidated further work and cooperation among the members. 

We shared our research interests; our research papers and we also built some common tools for data collection. We often discussed future research questions but most importantly we built a friendly and open network of academics who shared knack for technology, and it impact on SCM and PSM. Over time we have turned conversations into collaborations and landed a few papers in in our favourite journals such as JPSM and IJOPM

In 2020 and 2021 with the pandemic we kept our meeting virtual. It was great to see the faces of everyone smiling as we were joining our virtual sessions. It felt nice comforting and motivating to be altogether sharing news, interest, and research work.

Today the IPSERA IoT SIG might sound like a place where we talk about technology, but it is first and foremost an agora were curiosity, openness, and friendship blends together.

And …. We will meet again!

Michael Henke, Hervé Legenvre & Herbert Ruile

The newly formed SP-PD SIG will host its first webinar on either May 25^th  or 26 at 15:00 CEST. This will be the last webinar of the academic year in the new and very successful series hosted by IPSERA.

Topic: Publishing Procurement Research in Public Administration Journals.

In the first hour, we will bring together editors of PA journals, and researchers who have examined the role of procurement studies in PA journals, and draw on IPSERA members’ (successful and not-yet-successful) experiences of targeting PA journals. Then the panel will identify and debate the publishing opportunities and challenges for SP-PD researchers. There will be plenty of opportunity for participants to raise issues and contribute to the discussion.

The webinar will be on Zoom and last two hours, starting at 1500 CEST. Look out for an email from IPSERA announcing the date and how to register.

Confronted with the Covid-19 Pandemic, ongoing research projects requiring group attendance for experiments were mummified. This affected in particular our project on gamification and decision making under uncertainty in buyer-supplier relations. Questionnaires were ready for interviews and experiments, but….no students, no groups of participants allowed.  Also planned IPSERA workshops were postponed.

So, what did it mean? Just waiting? Biding our time? Instead, the rather unique situation where people had to face the ultimate uncertainty became topic of research. We were able to involve senior managers of 11 hotels to get involved in a 6 month 3 wave panel study. Our main research questions were “What goes on in their minds? Which topics and themes play a role? How do they invoke resilience?” 47 interviews later, we know. Our IPSERA Competitive paper describes the results: “Invoking resilience during the pandemic”. Full paper available, just send an email! And we are still working on this project, expanding the scope of the interviews. The last stage of this temporary project ends on the 1st September, when we plan to revitalise the original project on gamification. An IPSERA workshop on Gamification and decision making under uncertainty, is planned for mid-October 2021: either ’live’, on-line or a mix.

What else did we do in the meantime? We started two new PhD projects: (1) the material and money flows between the components of the tourism filière - starting 1 September 2020 (Alishan Karimov) - and (2) Block chain technology in a sustainable food supply chain, starting right now. Both are supposed to result in IPSERA contributions, of course.

Hence, in spite of the pandemic, we managed to keep our research going, as a sign of proper academic resilience. But of course, we keep our fingers crossed!

Dirk-Jan F. Kamann

The SIG held its inaugural meeting and hosted a panel session at the recent IPSERA conference – both were very well attended, leading to lively discussions and a commitment to arrange more before too long!

What’s in the name?  The scope of the SIG is to cover strategic procurement for organizations whose primary aim is to serve citizens, patients etc, rather than shareholders – hence the title to reflect working for the public good, not necessarily public sector based.

Shared interests and priorities We brainstormed ideas for SIG goals and activities around 3 themes: knowledge, profile and community building. Suggestions include discussions on data collection, debating possible research outlets and the impact of our research, and building synergies within different disciplines interacting in the public domain. Our thanks to Klaas Stek for capturing the discussion and voting:

At the end of the meeting, participants completed a small survey on their preferred goals and activities. As a first output we now have a (GDPR compliant ) list of SIG members for the members, to help networking. If you want to sign up, please email Louise Knight at l.a.knight@utwente.nl.

Covid-19 and Public Procurement Panel Session Colleagues exchanged views on  the longer-term implications of the pandemic on public/healthcare procurement research. From Canada to Germany, and from the US to England and Italy, reflections were sometimes very similar and other times divergent, but above all thought-provoking. A thank you to Tara Hartley, Michael Essig, Robert Handfield, Joanne Meehan and Gian Luigi Albano for your insightful perspectives.

A Network of PhD students A top priority for the SIG is to facilitate networking among PhD students. Please encourage students who are committed to, or contemplating, doctoral studies in SP-PD to get in contact (email esmee.peters@pprc.eu). They don’t have to be members of IPSERA yet – the Association is committed to student access and often provides free/discounted places/membership – we can work out a suitable arrangement.  We’ll be in contact soon with PhD students on the mailing list.

What’s next? A webinar end of May - all are welcome!

As ever, we were delighted to have the opportunity to announce the annual JPSM Award winners at the IPSERA conference. The last year has been busier than ever for JPSM. In 2020, we received 433 submissions; our previous ‘best’ was 299 in 2017. This is very good news, but also means there is even more pressure on our team of highly committed Associate Editors and the diligent reviewers. So, we begin with a huge thank-you to all JPSM authors, reviewers and handling editors.

As ever, we were delighted to have the opportunity to announce the annual JPSM Award winners at the IPSERA conference. The last year has been busier than ever for JPSM. In 2020, we received 433 submissions; our previous ‘best’ was 299 in 2017. This is very good news, but also means there is even more pressure on our team of highly committed Associate Editors and the diligent reviewers. So, we begin with a huge thank-you to all JPSM authors, reviewers and handling editors.

This year, all the awards are shared between 2 or 3 winners:

• Outstanding Associate Editor We wish to acknowledge the very significant contribution of two of the newest recruits to the editorial team: Guido Orzes and Andrea Patrucco. In a short time, they have dealt with rather a lot of submissions, made some difficult decisions, and exemplified JPSM’s developmental approach to the editorial process.
• Outstanding Reviewer Based on all reviews since Jan 2019 and advice from the editorial team, and taking into account the number, quality and timeliness of reviews, three candidates stood out from what (we are pleased to report) was a long short-list: Myles Garvey, Mellie Pullman and Frederik Vos. We are extremely grateful to them, and the other reviewers who dedicate many hours each year to this crucial, ‘behind the scenes’ role.
• Best Paper In consultation with the Associate Editors, we drew up a shortlist of the best papers published in 2020, based on the three criteria used in all editorial decisions. Six papers featured on this list. To paraphrase a comment made by one of the AEs involved in selecting the winners: they all do well on rigour; the decision rests on originality and significance – and it’s a tough choice.

The joint winners are:

Matteo Kalchschmidt, Sebastian Birolini, Mattia Cattaneo, Paolo Malighetti and Stefano Paleari The geography of suppliers and retailers

and

Harri Lorentz, Anna Aminoff, Rikka Kaipia, Matti Pihlajamaa, Jesse Ehtamo and Kari Tanskanen
Acquisition of supply market intelligence – An information processing perspective

Looking ahead First, we include the slide announcing the best paper shortlist to highlight the journal’s international outlook, a strength JPSM shares with IPSERA. However it also reveals the under-representation of authors outside western Europe and north America – an issue we want to continue to try to address, and for which we welcome suggestions.

Second, in December, we complete our second term as Editors in Chief. If all goes to plan, we will be announcing the JPSM EIC team for 2022-2024 in the summer, so there is plenty of time for the transition.

Louise Knight and Wendy Tate
Co-Editors in Chief, Journal of Purchasing and Supply Management