UE Professor Awarded Best Theoretical Paper of the Year

Evansville, IN (12/19/2019) — Yolanda Obaze, PhD, assistant professor of supply chain management and director of the UE Center for Supply Chain Management, was awarded Best Theoretical Paper of the Year at the 50th annual Decision Sciences Institute (DSI) Conference, November 23 - 25, 2019.

The Decision Sciences Institute is a global society of more than 2,700 academics and practitioners dedicated to creating, developing, fostering, and disseminating knowledge to improve managerial decisions and decision-making involving systems and people. The Institute, which celebrated its 50th Anniversary this year, hosts an annual conference to achieve its mission. The conference, held in New Orleans, Louisiana, was themed on "Transforming Decision Sciences Through Emergent Technologies."

Obaze's paper, titled "The Social innovation of community-based logistics and supply chain management," was one of more than 200 submitted, and was the winner of the Theoretical Paper Category.

The abstract for the paper reads: "The application of logistics and supply chain management (LSCM) into community-based initiatives allows for the collaboration of mixed social and economic networks and the innovative and improved movement of value-added resources to end-consumers in underserved communities. The literature review paper introduces a conceptual framework, accessible to scholars and practitioners that describe how the existing, dynamic and innovative capabilities of using LSCM supports social innovation and further creates social value in the community-based context. The proposed framework offers a basis for further empirical studies.