Jayanth Jayaram

Dr. Jayanth Jayaram, the Earl E. Congdon Distinguished Professor of Supply Chain Management at the Congdon School of Supply Chain Management at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington, is a scholar of diverse interests. His research areas, which span from sustainability to global sourcing, additive manufacturing, and supply chain risk management, are sure to pique the interest of students, faculty, and professionals in supply chain management and related fields. His PhD from Michigan State University laid the foundation for his broad-ranging research, which has been published in internationally reputed journals such as the Journal of Operations Management, Production and Operations Management, Journal of International Business Studies, and more. He also serves (or has served) on the editorial board of several journals, including the Journal of Operations Management (as a Departmental Editor), Journal of Supply Chain Management, Journal of Business Logistics, Decision Sciences and International Journal of Production Research as an Associate Editor. He is a frequent external reviewer of applications made in other universities for promotion and tenure cases. He also serves as an external reviewer of grant proposals submitted to National Science Foundation and similar grant agencies. He has been successful in obtaining grants from agencies like CIBER, Family Owned Business Institute and professional associations like Institute of Supply Management. His past experience includes significant contribution to Supply Chain Centers and interacting with the business community via applied research projects in companies like Westinghouse, Sams Club, Target, Sonoco, Trane and Bosch.

Education

Ph.D. in Supply Chain Management, Michigan State University
MBA, Central Michigan University
B.Sc in Mathematics, University of Bombay

Specialization in Teaching

Jayanth is a firm believer that pursuing rigorous and interdisciplinary research spills over to teaching as well. He has taught a wide variety of core and elective classes in supply chain management across different forums including undergraduates, honors students, graduate students as well as PhD students. These electives span the length and breadth of supply chains to include courses in sourcing, manufacturing, distribution and logistics and new product development. He has taught in executive programs covering global sourcing as well as renewable energy management. He likes to constantly update his teaching materials to align with the fast changing environments facing todays supply chains. For example, the constantly evolving tariff rates across the globe has made managing supply chains including its constituent decisions of planning and forecasting very challenging. As yet another example of being aligned with current phenomena, he is trying to learn how to incorporate learning in a AI/ML world into his courses. One of his latest cases that he published though the Harvard Business School portal is an example of an AI app that has been used in healthcare settings. His wide variety of teaching experience also includes pure online classes as well as hybrid classes. He has had a long history of incorporating company projects into his course that helps connect students to the supply chain problems faced by companies. He uses, videos, TED talks, consulting white papers, case studies as well as simulations to engage his students in active learning.

Research Interests

From his foundational research interest in supply chain integration which spanned multiple decades, his research areas, evolved to include, more current topics in the domains of sustainability, supply networks, additive manufacturing, resilience and supply chain risk management. He has examined research phenomena across a wide variety of units of analyses including, individual, firm, industry and at the country level. His research repertoire includes conducting both quantitative and qualitative research methods. While most of his research have taken a deductive approach, he has also pursued inductive research as well. He has published meta analyses, rigorous research case studies as well as studies that employ longitudinal designs. Given his vast experience base in universities that excelled in global supply chain management, he has successfully published studies that are not only based in the USA, but also in Europe, Australia and South Africa. His vast research collaborators includes researchers from other countries. He has also published in key practitioner journals like Supply Chain Management Review typically with coauthors from industry. He has served on several dissertation committees and worked successfully with doctoral students by guiding them through the research dissemination processes. He has conducted several online research workshops on topics that range from theory building and testing, to design science research and case study research. By tapping into his vast experience serving on editorial boards, he has conducted workshops on how to publish in quality journals in conferences, online workshops and to PhD students.

Professional Service

He has served in a wide variety of service engagements at the departmental level, college level and university level. Serving as a PhD coordinator in many schools and serving as the Promotion and Tenure Coordinator has helped him engage with stakeholders at the unit, business school and university level. He has had long associations with professional organizations like ASCM, CSCMP and ISM. He has served as faculty advisor to supply chain student clubs. He has invited executive to the class room for presentations as well as help identify student talent for supply chain companies. He has participated in faculty hiring committees both as a member and as a chair. He has used his wide network of contacts to help recruit graduate students as well as faculty. He takes his mentoring responsibility seriously by also engaging in informal mentoring. The span of mentoring includes career advising for undergraduate students, graduate students including PhD candidates. He also guides students when they are invited for company interviews for supply chain positions.

Community Engagement

My community engagements include direct contacts with companies and local chapters of professional SCM associations. Indirectly, I served the community by active guidance of students projects as they work with small and medium enterprises on supply chain issues. I also connect hiring companies to our students to help match demand and supply for supply chain talent.

Honors & Awards

My honors include leadership positions in several top tier journals. I have helped commission special issues on topics like modularity, entrepreneurship and artificial intelligence. I have received best paper awards for some of my research studies. For my editorial activities, I have received Best Editor awards as well. I have served as the director of several honors theses on supply chain topics. I am frequently invited to evaluate theses and grant proposals from universities in US and abroad. I have received research grant monies from several grant agencies. I also obtained a grant from Target to start a SCM student club. I have been selected to participate in the Fulbright US Scholar program. I have been invited as a Distinguished Visiting Scholar to one university in India and one university in New Zealand. I was invited to be a key note speaker at PROCURECON which is a leading professional association for practicing sourcing managers.