Recently, the Reimagining Supply Chain Initiative held a webinar with Nathalie Fabbe-Costes, a renowned professor from Aix-Marseille University. She presented her co-authored article The Map Is Not the Territory (IJOPM, 2020).
What she and her co-authors explored in this article is really exciting and innovative: 18 supply chain managers from a French automotive company were asked to map the supply chain of this company. In addition, interviews were conducted. Each map looks different, of course. By the way, these maps can be downloaded from the journal’s website.
Traditionally, the SCM discipline has followed a postivist paradigm. This means, among other things, that it is assumed that supply chain phenomena exist objectively. This is also the reason why SCM research usually tries to generalize observations. This is what the authors have done here, too: They have tried to show that one can create an “objectively correct” map by integrating the knowledge from the 18 maps of managers.
However, besides the positivist position, the authors have also taken two other positions: interpretivist and constructivist. The former does not assume objectively existing SCM phenomena, but that each person actually has an individual and thus subjective view of reality. The latter assumes that the map is socially constructed.
At first glance, the distinction between positivist, interpretivist, and constructivist thinking may sound very abstract. Indeed, this distinction touches a philosophical level that is hardly addressed in the SCM literature. I believe that this distinction is much more relevant to entrepreneurial practice than one might think. Nathalie demonstrated this impressively in her presentation. She also showed that all three positions complement each other very well.
This also has implications for how to teach supply chains to students in introductory SCM courses. Traditionally, instructors usually take a positivistic approach, probably without questioning it, and present maps of supply chains to them, overlooking the fact that these do not show reality, but only an individual interpretation of reality carried out by the textbook author. This interpretation then in turn influences the students’ future actions in corporate practice.
Unlike before, students should also be introduced to the interpretive and constructivist views on supply chain maps. Only then can they realize that the supply chain map is not the same as the territory, that is, the real supply chain – if it even exists objectively at all and not only in our heads.
Fabbe-Costes, N., Lechaptois, L., & Spring, M. (2020). “The Map Is Not the Territory”: A Boundary Objects Perspective on Supply Chain Mapping. International Journal of Operations & Production Management, 40 (9), 1475–1497. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJOPM-12-2019-0828
Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash
