Two academics from Lancaster University Management School (LUMS) have won the ‘Harold E. Fearon Best Paper Award’ from the prestigious Journal of Supply Chain Management.

Professors Kostas Selviaridis and Martin Spring from LUMS’ Department of Management Science were presented with the annual award during the Academy of Management conference, which took place in Boston this month.

The award-winning paper explores the collaboration between large buying organisations and technologically savvy small and medium sized businesses (SMEs). It examines how innovation policy addresses SME-specific institutional failures to foster innovation in public sector supply chains, particularly in the context of the National Health Service (NHS).

The Journal described the LUMS paper as ‘ground-breaking’, providing invaluable insights into supplier-enabled innovation in supply chains.

Professor Kostas Selviaridis said: “Industrial and innovation policies matter for supply chains. Our research shows how specific public policies stimulate technological innovation in the supply chain to address the grand challenges of our times, in this case affordable and accessible healthcare. Policies targeting technology-intensive SMEs seek to improve the delivery of public services while spurring economic growth. Overall, we found that these policies work but perhaps not at the scale required to transform public healthcare delivery.”

Fostering SME Supplier-Enabled Innovation in the Supply Chain: The Role of Innovation Policy was first published in the Journal of Supply Chain Management in August 2021.

It can be accessed here: https://doi.org/10.1111/jscm.12274