About

Walter Zinn is a Professor of Logistics at Fisher College of Business, Ohio State University. His career encompasses interests in logistics and supply chain research, academic administration, editorial responsibilities, and global engagement within the supply chain field. His research centers broadly on the relationship between inventory management and customer service, with specific focus on issues such as postponement, portfolio effect, consumer responses to stockouts, and risk management. His current work explores supply chain plasticity and crowdsourced delivery decisions. Professor Zinn has extensive academic administrative experience, including program management, serving as Chair of the Department of Marketing and Logistics for six years, and as Fisher College’s Associate Dean for Graduate Students and Programs from 2016 to 2019. He has held editorial roles, notably as Co-Editor-in-Chief for the Journal of Business Logistics from 2015 to 2020, and previously as Systems Section Editor for the same journal. His global work involves speaking at conferences and collaborating with academic and business communities in the US, Europe, China, and Latin America. Additionally, he has completed studies for the World Bank on supply chain management issues related to public policy. Professor Zinn teaches both graduate and undergraduate logistics courses, including a projects course that has directed over 100 student projects worldwide.

Research topics

• Business
• Marketing
• Industrial organization
• Commerce
• Market economy
• Economics

Selected publications

• Last Mile Delivery Capacity Planning With Two‐Sided Uncertainty

  Journal of Business Logistics · 2025-10-01 · 3 citations

  articleSenior author

  ABSTRACT Crowdsourced delivery (CD) is increasingly combined with private delivery (PD) to respond to last mile delivery (LMD) demand uncertainty. As independent contractors, CD drivers self‐schedule, which simultaneously creates labor supply uncertainty. Consequently, such LMD capacity planning requires addressing both uncertainties concurrently, a duality we term “two‐sided uncertainty.” In this setting, two key questions emerge: what is the optimal level of PD capacity when CD is available? How does two‐sided uncertainty impact the PD capacity decision? To that end, we adapt a two‐stage newsvendor model to explore the impact of two‐sided uncertainty on optimal PD capacity when CD is available. We combine Monte Carlo simulation and optimization in empirically grounded experiments using data from a Brazilian prepared meals company. We find a positive relationship between two‐sided uncertainty and PD capacity. We also reveal nuance in the relationship by identifying moderating effects due to correlation in driver availability across CD price tiers and failed delivery costs. The results also indicate that optimal delivery capacity typically combines PD and CD sources rather than relying on a single source. We show that managerial decisions based solely on lowest unit delivery cost while assuming away two‐sided uncertainty can lead to suboptimal decisions.

  PublisherDOI

• Plastic response to disruptions: Significant redesign of supply chains

  Journal of Business Logistics · 2022-08-31 · 31 citations

  article

  Abstract A plastic response is a type of resilient response to disruption whereby a supply chain is significantly redesigned. This is in contrast to the most common responses to disruption emphasized in the extant resilience literature, in which restoration of a supply chain to its pre‐disruption state is typically the focus. Researching plastic responses is important because they differ greatly from restoration. A plastic response is a new way to operate, thus requiring implementation of major changes to the supply chain. Accordingly, a foundational premise is adopted to characterize a plastic response as (1) a significant redesign, (2) due to a pressing need, (3) requiring most or all of the following: acquisition of new skills, investment in new assets and leadership support, (4) a permanent new way to operate. Additionally, eight propositions are offered to serve as bases for further research. These relate to two fundamental issues: when are plastic responses most likely to be exercised and how to enable plastic responses. The propositions were developed through qualitative data analysis and informed by change management theory. The data were collected from in‐depth interviews with global corporations in a variety of industries. Theoretical contributions and managerial implications are offered at the end.

  PublisherDOI

• Global Supply Chains: Globalization Research in a Changing World

  Journal of Business Logistics · 2020 · 25 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Business
  • Industrial organization
  • Commerce

  We all know of the famous Adam Smith concept of absolute advantage to explain the benefits of global trade. It is one of the earliest globalization ideas. It describes how trade potentializes the relative efficiencies of two economies. Suppose, for instance, that English firms are more efficient producing wool and French firms more efficient producing wine. Instead of each country producing both goods domestically, the absolute advantage argument is that both England and France would be better off producing what they do best and trading—wool exports to France and wine exports to England. Adam Smith was right in that the joint output would be greater and that both countries would be richer as a result. However, there is also an opposite argument in favor of market protection. Despite the overall gain in common wealth, trade can create losers. English wine producers and French wool producers would likely be harmed by free, open trade. Their interest stages the argument for market protections. The clash between these two opposing arguments did not fundamentally change in nearly 250 years. In fact, it is as relevant today as ever. After a prolonged push for increased global trade following World War II, there is currently pushback in some settings. Think of renegotiating the NAFTA Treaty, the “trade war” with China, and Brexit as cases in point. Still, there are forces, such as remaining trade agreements, China’s Belt and Road Initiative, and investment flows that continue to favor trade. As a result, we find ourselves facing an unprecedented level of uncertainty and change in global trade. Change in global trade is principally driven by economic, technological, political, and natural factors. On the economic side, some countries increase/decrease their footprint either as producers of goods and services or as markets for imports. Technological innovation can also increase a country’s footprint and improve the cost and service of global trade itself. Further, the ideology espoused by governments influences trade-related policies, from more open to more protectionist. Recently, firms were challenged by another type of global change, the threat posed by the spread of the coronavirus labeled COVID-19. In this instance, a health crisis has forced businesses to reconsider the logistics of people and freight across national boundaries in an effort to control the spread of contagion. This challenge in some cases made firms aware of their dependence on a single source of supply, leading them to make radical changes to their supply chains. Overall, these changes impose major challenges to supply chains; whether they are directly engaged in global trade or are, instead, a domestic supply chain affected by global actors. How are supply chains affected by changes in economic, technological, political, and natural forces taking shape around the world? How are they affected by the related volatility brought forth by uncertainty in the timing and extent of these changes? How can firms manage their effort to become more agile and responsive to customer demands when their supply chains stretch around the world? Expansion or repatriation of global supply chains generally affects their length. When longer, supply chains operate across more legal jurisdictions and economic systems; and deal with labor pools with different talent levels, work rules, and wages. They also operate with transportation systems varying in efficiency and cost; and face different risks in economic stability and proclivity for natural disasters. Shorter supply chains tend to be simpler to manage but are less capable to take advantage of opportunities in global markets for sources of supply and customers. At the firm level, whenever production facilities or distribution hubs are relocated or repurposed, issues such as network redesign come to the fore. A change in one node requires changes in many other nodes, whether they are directly related to global trade or not. Location factors, in turn, impact issues such as labor management, sustainability, transportation cost, and inventory/warehousing cost. And, of course, there is the additional need to acquire new management skills and remove outdated ones. Finally, trade uncertainty adds risk, both operational and financial, clouding investment decisions. These changes at the firm level clearly affect related supply chains. As one firm redesigns its supply chains, suppliers, third-party service providers, and customers are affected as well. In some cases, new processes are needed, while in others, new suppliers must be identified and qualified. As globalization is furthered in some cases and rethought in others, corresponding research questions in supply chain management come to the fore. Global supply chain research is therefore a current and crucial topic. It must fulfill its role to help academics and practitioners understand current challenges and produce actionable results. Accordingly, the Journal of Business Logistics is issuing a call for a Special Topic Forum in Global Supply Chain Research. The call is for a broad-based STF looking into managerial issues regarding challenges in global supply chain management. Research published in supply chain management journals in general, and in the Journal of Business Logistics in particular, is severely lacking at a global level. An exception is JBL’s close partnership with the European Research Seminar, held annually in different European cities and attended mostly by European and American researchers. It provided a significant number of quality publications over the years. Still, we do not know enough about how changes in the global trade environment are affecting supply chains and the firms in them. Much more is needed. Submissions of global-related papers typically fit into one or more of three broad categories: global trade, trade within multi-country agreements, and changes affecting domestic supply chains in countries foreign to the focal firm. Research in global trade and multi-country trade agreements encompasses issues related to, for instance, the impact of tariffs, currency risk, or the toll of political instability on supplier relations. Similarly, the challenges of tapping into new regulations, labor pools, or consumer markets whenever a supply chain is relocated to a new country make for interesting research as well. Furthermore, issues related to setting up a domestic supply chain in countries other than a firm’s home country are a clearly underresearched topic deserving of attention. In addition, the impact of new technologies such as blockchain, additive manufacturing, or artificial intelligence on global supply chains might equally contribute to the STF, as technology is a key source of change in today’s supply chains. JBL’s long-standing policy of being agnostic to the usage of different methodologies applies to this STF as well. The focus is not so much on the choice of method itself as it is on its suitability for the research questions being asked and how well it is applied. Hence, the JBL Editor team is entertaining proposals for Guest Editors for a Special Topic Forum on global supply chains. The deadline for proposals is April 30, 2020. The STF’s call should be out by July 31 and the deadline for submissions, March 31, 2021. Manuscripts will be reviewed as soon as they are received. Let’s now transition to the current issue of JBL. We lead off with an article by Foerstl and Franke (2020) that explores the phenomenon of cross-functional teams for sourcing. While collecting the inputs of experts from various parts of the organization for strategic procurement decision making seems routine today, the authors note that a collaborative approach to procurement can be rife with conflict. The research employs a large sample of participants from a social team experiment to measure the influence of factors such as goal misalignment, political behavior, and team conflict on team sourcing behavior and team members’ satisfaction. The research offers rich perspectives for fellow academics but also those challenged with making cross-functional engagement live up to its potential. Next, Craighead et al. (2020) examine the prospects for successful new product launch in emerging markets based on distinct knowledge types. Two data collections yield different results, suggesting that emerging market footholds benefit extensively from logistics and competitive knowledge, whereas other forms of knowledge (namely, customer knowledge) become more prominent as markets mature. The analysis illustrates that logistics and other types of knowledge can be instrumental to new product launch in emerging markets. Yang et al. (2020) takes us into the realm of inventory optimization. The authors devise a trade-off analysis that affords managers the opportunity to right-size inventories against competing cost and service scenarios. The research examines item- and order-based inventory performance measures in a multi-item inventory system for finished goods. Inventory classification and inventory control policy decisions inform the analysis that can inspire academics and practitioners alike. Finally, carriers, shippers, and regulators will take particular interest in the longitudinal analysis conducted by Miller et al. (2020) regarding the proclivity of small- and medium-sized motor carriers to comply with the U.S. electronic logging device (ELD) mandate, as the rules approached enforcement on December 18, 2017. The research employs multiple theories to explain how and why carriers of different size and geographic coverage complied differently as the mandate approached. The authors conduct a series of discrete choice logistic regression models on data spanning four months (September to December 2017) to arrive at their conclusions. Enjoy the issue!

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Sustainable Retailing

  Journal of Retailing · 2020 · 213 citations

  • Business
  • Marketing
  • Industrial organization
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• A Challenge in Our Time: Issues of Race in Supply Chain Management

  Journal of Business Logistics · 2020-09-01 · 25 citations

  articleSenior author

  This editorial addresses one of the greatest challenges of our time—racial inequality. Logistics and supply chain management (SCM) factor prominently in people’s everyday experiences, as consumers of products and logistics services as well as through participation in logistics and supply chain workforces. These everyday experiences can be quite disparate depending on one’s race. As academics, we have a responsibility to peel back the layers of how these issues of race and diversity impact and interact with supply chain phenomena. This editorial is intended to bolster conversation around these issues. We identify compelling themes that merit consideration and, perhaps, deeper investigation, including race as an individual difference variable in our research, race in SCM talent and leadership, and race and racism in SCM execution. We also call for more research that addresses racial inclusion and equal access in other aspects of SCM in light of its far‐reaching influence in the realms of business and society. The time has come to address these pervasive issues affecting organizations and individuals. We also introduce the articles appearing in the current issue of the journal.

  PublisherDOI

• Sustainable Retailing

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2020-01-01 · 15 citations

  articleOpen access
  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

• Toward a Digitally Dominant Paradigm for twenty-first century supply chain scholarship

  International Journal of Physical Distribution & Logistics Management · 2019-10-02 · 124 citations

  article

  Purpose The digital advances in modern industry are accelerating changes in the broad social, economic, political and business environments within which supply chain management (SCM) is practiced. Given this extraordinary contextual upheaval, the conduct of research to identify, define, understand and explain how the digital revolution will impact key SCM concepts is imperative. The purpose of this paper is to introduce a theoretically grounded Digitally Dominant Paradigm (DDP) framework that demonstrates how digital concepts and insights can be infused into existing elements of best-practice SCM, in order to help guide future research. Design/methodology/approach Middle-range theorizing is proposed as a means to explore the ways in which researchers can explain supply chain phenomena (i.e. build theory) in the age of digitalization. Findings An example of how a DDP framework can be applied to a well-entrenched logistics/supply chain concept is provided, and the authors conclude by identifying exemplary research propositions for future exploration. Originality/value The broad goal of the paper is to spark forward-looking supply chain scholarship based upon development of a DDP of SCM.

  PublisherDOI

• Supply Chain Plasticity: Redesigning Supply Chains to Meet Major Environmental Change

  Journal of Business Logistics · 2019-09-01 · 33 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Supply chain plasticity refers to the capability of rapidly making major changes to a supply chain in order to accommodate significant shifts in the business environment. We call for research in supply chain plasticity, as the need to adapt to environmental change has never been greater. Further, a distinction between supply chain plasticity and flexibility is provided. We also introduce the articles appearing in this issue of the Journal of Business Logistics , including three papers dedicated to the Special Topic Forum titled “Sustainable Supply Chains in a Digital Inter‐connected World.”

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• A Historical Review of Postponement Research

  Journal of Business Logistics · 2019-03-01 · 38 citations

  review1st authorCorresponding

  This historical review traces the development of postponement research starting in the fifties. The focus is on seven related themes: connecting form and time postponement, conceptual extensions to postponement, decoupling points, design for postponement, customization and mass customization, factors favoring postponement implementation, and postponement in global settings. Within these themes, the review includes concepts such as postponement costs, decoupling points, part commonality, and the impact of demand correlations on the benefits of postponement. The review suggests that substantial progress has been made in postponement research.

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Thomas J. Goldsby

  20 shared

• A. Michael Knemeyer

  Fisher College

  9 shared

• John M. Charnes

  University of Kansas

  7 shared

• Keely L. Croxton

  Fisher College

  7 shared

• Howard Marmorstein

  University of Miami

  4 shared

• Molly M. Hughes

  West Virginia University

  4 shared

• John T. Mentzer

  Virginia Tech

  4 shared

• Terry L. Esper

  The Ohio State University

  3 shared

Awards & honors

• Bernard J. LaLonde Award for best paper published in JBL in…