A Call for Theory: The Maturation of the Supply Chain Management Discipline

This essay introduces a forum that discusses the conceptual theory development approach within the context of the supply chain management discipline. The purpose of the forum is to provide guidance to both authors and reviewers concerning how to carry out meaningful and impactful conceptual theory development research. In this essay I discuss the conceptual theory development approach, describe the Journal of Supply Chain Management's perspective and philosophy toward conceptual theory development, offer broad guidelines to aid authors in crafting their work and reviewers in effectively evaluating and helping authors to further develop their manuscripts, and introduce the remaining essays that comprise the discussion forum.