|
CALL FOR CHAPTER PROPOSALS Proposal Submission Deadline: November 30th 2008 Full Chapter Submission Deadline: March 31st 2009 Managing Risk in Virtual Enterprise Networks: Implementing Supply Chain Principles A book edited by Stavros T. Ponis, National Technical University Athens
Introduction
The 21st century’s unstable and highly competitive business environment has created an enterprise management shift from well-defined, stable enterprises having limited relationships with other companies and focusing on internal efficiency and effectiveness to loose enterprise formations, tightly integrated with their suppliers and customers, pursuing overall optimization. In that context, the term Virtual Enterprise has received significant recognition from researchers all over the world describing temporary networks of independent companies –suppliers, customers and rivals linked by Information Technology (IT) to share skills, costs and access to one another’s market. Managing such an enterprise network has evolved toward utilizing numerous new practices such as lean manufacturing, low cost country sourcing and outsourcing, co-manufacturing and supplier rationalization, all targeted to the objective of reducing waste and minimizing costs throughout the supply chain, in an end-to-end fashion. However, none of these practices comes without consequences especially to what risk vulnerability is concerned. Stretching the supply chain to absorb inefficiencies, though tempting and gainful, removes defense mechanisms and safe cushions resulting in increased vulnerability to threats produced by even the smallest or least expected cause of disruption. Being anorexic, enterprise networks fail to react effectively to these risk-imposing events resulting in reduced revenues and market share, inflated costs, budget failures, production mismatches and at the end of the day, dissatisfied partners and customers. Despite its critical nature and importance, Risk Management (RM) especially in the broad context of Virtual Enterprise Networks is a novel concept at its infancy, which entails a great potential for producing research results that can benefit the affiliated research communities. Existing research efforts fail to bridge the gap between theory and practice, investigate risk management under a holistic/systemic network perspective and identify successfully critical issues for both Risk Management and Supply Chain practitioners. That is exactly the area of research this book sets its vision and aspired objectives further described in the next section. Overall Objective of the Book
Managing Risks in Virtual Enterprise Networks is a rather underexplored and unstructured scientific area. While this stands as an impediment for researchers and practitioners that aim to study the field, it also provides an increased degree of freedom in the development of new concepts, models, methodologies, etc. The overall objective of this book is to contribute to activities that will result in a structured mapping of the scientific terrain, bridge the gap between traditional RM theories and practice, provide a toolset to RM practitioners and last but not least increase the awareness on the Risk Management discipline, its usefulness and importance, in the context of contemporary enterprise formations. In doing so, “Managing Risk in Virtual Enterprise Networks: Implementing Supply Chain Principles” will gather contributions from well known scholars from different but still related disciplines (see target audience section), review current thinking and illustrate, compare, and discuss models, perspectives, and approaches that can be helpful to understanding state-of-the-art current research on this topic. Based on the solid definition of existing state-of-the-art, this book will attempt to bridge the gap between theory and practice by providing common guidelines for both researchers and practitioners (research results’ consumers or contributors). This book is designed to cover a wide spectrum of knowledge spanning from original literature reviews and case studies or other empirical research to conceptual, theoretical and methodological contributions. This book will help the reader to gain a holistic view of the scientific area under study while introducing present development on managing risks in contemporary enterprise networks. Target Audience
This publishing venture aspires to set a point-of-reference for all those research entities interested in applying new ideas and synthetic thinking to Supply Chain Management established concepts, from both academia and the industry. The principal audience will consist of scholars and researchers in the fields of Supply Chain Management, Operations Research, Risk and Crisis Management, Logistics Management, Information Technologies and E-Commerce among others. Furthermore, the reader-friendly nature of this book aims to attract both graduate and post-graduate students who will hopefully consider it as a valuable reference resource. Recommended topics include, but are not limited to, the following:
1. Virtual Enterprise Networks - Taxonomy and literature review.
2. New Trends in Virtual Enterprise Networking.
3. Established Supply Chain Risk Management Strategies, Concepts, Methodologies and Practices.
4. Trends in SC Risk Management
5. Risk Forecasting, Evaluation and Assessment. Establishing an effective Risk Management System.
6. When Risk Become Crisis: Effective Business Network Management during Crisis.
7. Supply Chain Vulnerability; How vulnerable is your business network?
8. Managing Risk in Virtual Enterprise Networks. Comparison Studies with traditional SC risk management.
9. Integrating network performance management with Risk.
10. Multi-sourcing. Is it a panacea in crisis prevention?
11. Flexible Supply Chains; A boost for Risk mitigation?
12. Arming your business network against disruptions. Disruptions planning and management.
13. Integrating Risks in Contract Management.
14. The importance of trust in Virtual Enterprise Networks.
15. Financial Risk Assessment.
16. Modeling and Simulating Disruptions and other Crisis Events.
17. Security Issues in Virtual Enterprise Networks.
18. Quality Related Risk Issues. Submission Procedure
Researchers and practitioners are invited to submit on or before November 30th 2008, a 2-3 page chapter proposal clearly explaining the mission and concerns of their proposed chapter. Authors of accepted proposals will be notified by January 15th, 2009 about the status of their proposals and sent chapter guidelines. Full chapters are expected to be submitted by March 31st 2009. Each chapter will undergo a double-blind peer review. Two reviewers, specialising in the same area of the author, will assess the quality of the paper in that specific field. The other reviewer, specialising in a completely different field, will assess the “readability”, and will provide suggestions to simplify the language, clarify concepts, make bridges towards other disciplines, etc. Authors will be informed of the final acceptance/ rejection by June 30th 2009. The book is scheduled to be published by IGI Global (formerly Idea Group Inc.), http://www.igi-global.com/, publisher of the Information Science Reference (formerly Idea Group Reference) and Medical Information Science Reference imprints. Important Dates:
November 30, 2008: Proposal Submission Deadline
January 15, 2009: Notification of Acceptance
March 31, 2009: Full Chapter Submission
May 25, 2009: Review Result Returned
July 15, 2009: Final Chapter Submission
August 15, 2009: Final Deadline Inquiries and submissions can be forwarded electronically (Word document) or by mail to: Dr. Stavros T. Ponis
National Technical University Athens (http://www.ntua.gr)
Section of Industrial Management and Operations Research
Iroon Polytechniou 9A – Zografos 15780
Athens - Greece
Tel: +30 210 7722384; Fax: +30 210 7723571; Mobile: +30 6936941072
Email:
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it
|
Managing Risks in VEs Call For Chapters
