About

Keely Croxton is a Professor of Logistics in the Department of Marketing and Logistics at The Ohio State University. Her research interests are centered on supply chain management, with a particular focus on supply chain resilience, demand management, and relationship management. She has developed expertise in helping companies balance inherent vulnerabilities with management capabilities to effectively respond to disruptions in the supply chain. Her work aims to further develop process-oriented frameworks for supply chain management. She has been recognized for her scholarly contributions, with her research published in several leading journals and receiving awards such as the Bernard J. LaLonde Best Paper Award for the Journal of Business Logistics. Croxton holds a Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and an undergraduate degree from Northwestern University. Before her academic career, she gained industry experience working in automotive, paper and packaging, and third-party logistics sectors. At Ohio State, she teaches courses on modeling, forecasting, and supply chain management at various academic levels, including undergraduate, MBA, Ph.D., and Executive Education, and also teaches Social Impact to MBA students. She serves on the advisory board of OSU’s Global Water Initiative.

Research topics

• Marketing
• Industrial organization
• Business
• Political Science
• Computer Science
• Engineering
• Transport engineering
• Process management

Selected publications

• Is Your Supply Chain Breaking Down? Call AAA for Resilience Assistance

  Journal of Business Logistics · 2025-01-01 · 9 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  ABSTRACT Supply chain disruptions regularly interrupt the normal operations of organizations, impairing their financial, operational, and service performance. Therefore, organizations must develop capabilities to enhance their resilience–their ability to anticipate, overcome, and transform after disruptions. The literature proposes that agility, adaptability, and alignment (AAA capabilities) enhance long‐term organizational success but does not explicitly link these AAA capabilities to resilience. Motivated by conversations with senior supply chain leaders, our research explores how organizations utilize practices, behaviors, and structures to build AAA capabilities in their pursuit of resilience over different phases of disruption. We use a grounded theory approach, conducting in‐depth, semi‐structured interviews with supply chain executives. Our findings contribute to the supply chain resilience literature by (a) highlighting how distinct practices, behaviors, and structures support the development of distinct AAA capabilities, (b) demonstrating which AAA capabilities are most influential in enhancing resilience during specific phases of a disruption, and (c) illustrating how the AAA capabilities operate in a feedback loop to synergistically improve resilience over the lifecycle of a disruption.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Energizing Research at the Intersection of Public Policy and Supply Chain Resilience: A Systematic Review and Guiding Framework

  Journal of Business Logistics · 2024 · 16 citations

  • Political Science
  • Business
  • Industrial organization

  ABSTRACT Academic scholars and US political leaders have called for a better understanding of the connection between public policy and supply chain resilience. In this structured literature review we analyze and synthesize literature published in high‐quality public policy and business journals at this intersection. We leverage existing frameworks in public policy and supply chain resilience to help analyze the relationships studied to date, resulting in a conceptual framework that elucidates the connections between public policy and resilience and leads to the development of a platform for future research inquiries. We encourage and provide guidance for future work in the space from both supply chain management and public policy scholars that can drive actionable results for policymakers, firm decision‐makers, and the welfare of society.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Do Supply Chain Exemplars Have More or Less Dependent Suppliers?

  Journal of Business Logistics · 2020 · 25 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding
  • Computer Science
  • Business
  • Industrial organization

  Extant literature offers differing perspectives regarding whether buying firms benefit from having highly dependent suppliers. One view is that buyers benefit from having dependent suppliers as this provides buyers the ability to dictate terms in the relationship. An alternative perspective is that buyers are worse off from having dependent suppliers in that this dependence can lead to conditions that harm value creation. In this manuscript, supply chain management theory is extended by evaluating these differing predictions. This is accomplished by analyzing a database from Bloomberg of objective, secondary data for more than 3,000 supplier relationships for 49 firms independently recognized as possessing exemplar supply chains and 530 of these firms’ largest industry rivals based on GICS industry codes. These data are utilized to develop a portfolio‐level measure of buyer–supplier dependence that incorporates the bilateral nature of dependence. The findings indicate that, relative to their industry rivals, firms with exemplar supply chains have suppliers with a lower level of dependency. These results contribute to theory, inform management practice, and suggest avenues for future research.

  PublisherDOI

• Everything Old is New Again: The Age of Consumer‐Centric Supply Chain Management

  Journal of Business Logistics · 2020 · 90 citations

  • Marketing
  • Business
  • Industrial organization

  Over the past several decades, the disciplines of marketing and logistics grew apart from their common historical origins as marketing became more behavioral and more quantitative, while logistics leaned toward a more operational orientation. We argue in this editorial that social and technological changes in the past 20 years, coupled with the effects of the COVID pandemic, have created the conditions for the two disciplines to reconnect. We propose that scholars and practitioners consider a consumer‐centric approach to supply chain management. Such an approach advocates that the entire supply chain should focus on consumer experience rather than mere customer service and that experiences might include issues such as last‐mile delivery, supply chain visibility, and consumer values. We also introduce the papers appearing in this issue of the journal.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Resilience of medium-sized firms to supply chain disruptions: the role of internal social capital

  International Journal of Operations & Production Management · 2019-03-29 · 207 citations

  article

  Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore resources or capabilities that enable medium-sized firms to be resilient, namely, to avoid and recover from supply chain disruptions. Design/methodology/approach A case-study method is employed with four medium-sized manufacturing firms headquartered in the USA that have global supply chains. Data are collected from semi-structured interviews with key informants from diverse functions and managerial levels, archival documents, observation and a resilience assessment. Findings Internal social capital emerged as a resilience-enhancing resource, comprising: structural capital grounded in small network size, geographical proximity among decision makers and low hierarchy; relational capital grounded in close relationships, commitment and respect; and cognitive capital grounded in long employee tenure. Originality/value This is the first paper in the supply chain management literature to examine the resilience of medium-sized firms, an under-researched context. It is also the first paper to introduce internal social capital as a resilience-enhancing resource. Hence, this is among the few papers to propose a resilience-enhancing resource rooted not in a firm’s supply chain operations but its human resources. This paper, moreover, identifies several facets of internal social capital within medium-sized firms. Finally, the paper makes several managerial contributions.

  PublisherDOI

• The Evolution of Resilience in Supply Chain Management: A Retrospective on Ensuring Supply Chain Resilience

  Journal of Business Logistics · 2019-03-01 · 718 citations

  article

  We opened our 2010 paper in the Journal of Business Logistics with a 6th century quote by Heraclitus – “The only constant is change.” This immutable law certainly holds in today's volatile business world, especially for supply chain management, and has been the driving factor behind the interest in resilience. Since the seminal works of the mid‐to‐late 1990s and early 2000s, the supply chain discipline has progressed toward a common understanding of resilience. But we're not there yet. This paper reflects on the impact of our 2010 paper, and envisions future opportunities for advances in resilience that will improve both day‐to‐day business continuity and long‐term sustainability. We are honored to be selected for this 40th Anniversary Issue of the Journal of Business Logistics, and proud that our paper has been recognized as the most cited of the decade.

  PublisherDOI

• Customer and Supplier Portfolios: Can Credit Risks be Managed Through Supply Chain Relationships?

  Journal of Business Logistics · 2018-05-23 · 71 citations

  articleSenior author

  While supply chain risk has been the subject of an ever‐increasing amount of research attention, the importance of credit risk has been less studied, at least by supply chain researchers. Yet, there may be risks inherent within a firm's portfolios of supply chain relationships that are manifested in the credit risk of a firm. Moreover, portfolio characteristics may serve as a signal to the external market regarding these risks. While customer and supplier portfolio characteristics may impact the firm's exposure to risks, the specific issue of how portfolio characteristics relate to credit risk has rarely been examined by supply chain scholars. This research bridges extant works in supply chain management and finance to relate supply chain characteristics to a critical reputational outcome, namely credit ratings. In this research, we utilize a sample of firms that recently underwent an initial public offering to empirically examine the theoretical predictions of Resource Dependence Theory regarding the relationships between different supply chain portfolio characteristics and credit risk.

  PublisherDOI

• Thirsty in an Ocean of Data? Pitfalls and Practical Strategies When Partnering With Industry on Big Data Supply Chain Research

  Journal of Business Logistics · 2018-08-17 · 16 citations

  article

  Increased volume, velocity, and variety of data provides new opportunities for businesses to take advantage of data science techniques, predictive analytics, and big data. However, firms are struggling to make use of their disjointed and unintegrated data streams. Despite this, academics with the analytic tools and training to pursue such research often face difficulty gaining access to corporate data. We explore the divergent goals of practitioners and academics and how the gap that exists between the communities can be overcome to derive mutual value from big data. We describe a practical roadmap for collaboration between academics and practitioners pursuing big data research. Then we detail a case example of how, by following this roadmap, researchers can provide insight to a firm on a specific supply chain problem while developing a replicable template for effective analysis of big data. In our case study, we demonstrate the value of effectively pairing management theory with big data exploration, describe unique challenges involved in big data research, and develop a novel and replicable hierarchical regression‐based process for analyzing big data.

  PublisherDOI

• From risk to resilience: Learning to deal with disruption

  MIT Sloan management review · 2015-12-01 · 242 citations

  article

  Supply chain practices designed to keep costs low in a stable business environment can increase risk levels during disruptions. Just-in-time and lean production methods, whereby managers work closely with a small number of suppliers to keep inventories low, can make companies more vulnerable due to the lack of buffer capacity. Traditional methods for coping with supply chain risks are based on the notion of stability as the normal state of affairs. The importance of risk management was elevated by a number of high- profile disasters. While processes such as enterprise risk management (ERM) and business continuity management (BCM) can help companies avoid supply chain disruptions and recover normal operations quickly, they also have serious limitations. The supply chain resilience assessment and management (SCRAM) framework enables a business to identify and prioritize the supply chain vulnerabilities it faces as well as the capabilities it should strengthen to offset those vulnerabilities. One company that has incorporated the SCRAM framework into its way of doing business is the Dow Chemical Co.

  Publisher

• Logistics Management

  Wiley Encyclopedia of Management · 2015-01-21

  otherSenior author

  Abstract Logistics management refers to the management of product flows across a firm's supply chain in order to meet customer requirements. More formally, logistics management is defined as “that part of supply chain management that plans, implements, and controls the efficient, effective, forward and reverse flow and storage of goods, services, and related information between the point of origin and the point of consumption in order to meet customers' requirements” ( cscmp.org ). In simpler terms, the goal of logistics is to have the right product, at the right time, in the right place, at the right cost, and in the right condition.

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• A. Michael Knemeyer

  Fisher College

  9 shared

• Bernard Gendron

  8 shared

• Walter Zinn

  The Ohio State University

  7 shared

• Thomas L. Magnanti

  Singapore University of Technology and Design

  6 shared

• Sebastián J. García‐Dastugue

  6 shared

• Douglas M. Lambert

  6 shared

• Joseph Fiksel

  The Ohio State University

  5 shared

• Timothy J. Pettit

  National University System

  5 shared

Education

• Ph.D., Operations Research Center

  Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)

  1999

• Bachelor of Science, Industrial Engineering

  Northwestern University

  1992

Awards & honors

• Bernard J. LaLonde Best Paper Award