Trade and Media Publications

On most university campuses as well as in many institutions, notably media outlets and some corporations, DEI efforts are focused on internal staff. At universities, these reform efforts have centered on students’ admissions, faculty hiring, and a plethora of activities aimed at re-education. Those efforts, as well as MIT’s, define DEI in terms of race, gender, sexual orientation, and related parameters. In particular, universities argue that diversity of race, gender, and sexual orientation is important to generate a vibrant learning and research environment.

Read an excerpt from Inbound Logistics January 2021 issue, which features a piece from Professor Yossi Sheffi's latest book, The New (Ab)Normal. 

During the pandemic, stay-at-home consumers switched to online buying, and the 2020 roll call of bricks-and-mortar bankruptcies reads like a “who’s who” of retailing, however, the pandemic has also unleashed a wave of unparalleled supply chain innovation. {Originally published in Supply Chain Management Review}

Large-scale disruptions such as the COVID-19 pandemic cause huge supply/demand imbalances due to interruptions in supply or surges in demand. In an unstable environment, companies often have to prioritize which customers they serve. Past disruptions reveal how companies on both ends of the supply chain have handled such challenges, both in terms of tactics they employed and considerations they used for their decisions.

The second part of the Management Business Review, which is a response to Professor Sheffi's "The Real Inconvenient Truth" article. 

Covid-19 has swelled the e-commerce tidal wave that was submerging traditional retailing before the virus struck. During the pandemic, stay-at-home consumers switched to online buying in droves, and the 2020 roll call of brick-and-mortar bankruptcies reads like a "Who's Who" of retailing. 

Consumers choose economic development over serious climate initiatives. Corporations don't invest in meaningful change, because consumers won't pay for it. And governments cannot lead if citizens won't follow. The battle to prevent climate change through behavior modification, regulation, or personal deprivation has already been lost. Yossi Sheffi explains why the solution is collaborative investment in developing technologies that can reverse climate change. 

The Trump administration’s aggressive stance toward China has compounded uncertainty on U.S.-China trade relations. In considering how the presidential elections may affect the flow of international trade, companies should avoid the accepted wisdom.

Governments and corporations have an opportunity to lead the transition toward sustainable consumption and production by shifting their purchasing power toward environmentally responsible supply networks. But this will require reliable information on complex global supply networks. What information and decision-support tools do governments and corporations need to galvanize this transition?

When companies cannot meet the full demands of their customers, leaders need to set clear decision criteria and the mechanisms to back them up.