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SUMMARY Services have become increasingly important as the driving force in the U.S. economy. However, there has been little research to date on services supply chains. It is believed that service businesses can benefit by applying some best practices from manufacturing to their processes. However, the inherent differences in services create a need for supply chain management tools specific to the services sector. This article documents the growing importance of the services sector and of services purchasing. Next, it develops a supply chain framework appropriate for a services supply chain by comparing and contrasting the applicability of three product‐based manufacturing models: Global Supply Chain Forum Framework, SCOR and Hewlett‐Packard's Supply Chain Management Model. Finally, this research describes the challenges for procurement professionals managing purchases for a services supply chain and provides suggestions for use of supply chain management theory, and practices for improvement.

Firms are increasingly under pressure from stakeholders to incorporate the triple‐bottom line of social, environmental and economic responsibility considerations into operations and supply chain management strategies. This research uses content analysis software that performed centering resonance analysis to examine corporate communication to stakeholders through corporate social responsibility (CSR) reports. The intent is to determine how supply chain strategies factor in to the triple‐bottom line of 100 socially and environmentally responsible global companies. This research compares and contrasts the influential words in the CSR reports of firms from a range of industries, sizes and geographical regions. The content analysis revealed ten themes that provide a snapshot of how top global companies integrate and improve the triple‐bottom line in internal operations and external supply chains. Findings indicated that while institutional pressure is the major driving force behind strategy development for all of the industries studied, companies emphasize different facets of social, environmental and economic responsibility upstream and downstream in supply chains based on industry, size and geographic location. The analysis revealed unique insights regarding corporate communications that other methodologies would not find.

This research uses data from a survey to explore the factors that affect organizations' manufacturing location decisions. Manufacturing location, more specifically the possibility of firms nearshoring or reshoring, has received a great deal of recent attention, especially in the United States. This paper applies the location aspect of internalization theory to provide an understanding of what factors affect organizations' perceptions of the attractiveness of various regions as locations for owned manufacturing facilities. An exploratory factor analysis is used to develop factors that drive manufacturing location decisions. Multiple regression analysis is used to test the relationship between the drivers of manufacturing location decisions and movement of manufacturing into or out of a region, and overall perceived risk of a region. Findings indicate that various drivers have differential effects across regions. For example, while North America is viewed favorably for its trade policies over the next 3 years, the trade policies are also viewed as an increasing source of risk, possibly reflecting bipartisan conflicts. Three theoretical propositions are developed to advance the understanding of the current state of manufacturing location decisions from an internalization perspective. It appears that organizations are beginning to look at their manufacturing location decisions through a broader lens, giving more weight to supply chain issues as well as strategic factors.

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