December 18, 2023
Meet John Kros, McMahon Distinguished Professor of Marketing and Supply Chain Management
John F. Kros currently is the McMahon Distinguished Professor of Marketing and Supply Chain Management in the College of Business at East Carolina University, in Greenville, North Carolina. He teaches Business Decision Modeling, Statistics, Operations and Supply Chain Management, and Purchasing and Materials Management courses.
Before joining academia, John was employed in the electronics manufacturing industry by Hughes Network Systems (HNS), in Germantown, Maryland. Professionally John is a member of the Council for Supply Chain Management Professionals (CSCMP), the Institute for Supply Management (ISM), the Institute for Operations Research and Management Science (INFORMS), Production Operations Management Society (POMS), and the Decision Sciences Institute (DSI).
How will you leverage this gift (the professorship) with your work?
As the recipient of the McMahon Distinguished Professorship, I have been charged with enhancing our undergraduate and graduate students’ learning experience while conducting meaningful research at the same time. Within academia, tenured faculty are evaluated on and rewarded for work in three areas: teaching, research, and service. My goal for the professorship is to have a clear agenda in each of the following areas.
- student interaction and student travel experiences
- a rich research agenda, including writing peer-reviewed journal articles, writing/revising textbooks, and engaging in external consulting projects
- involvement with professional organizations within the supply chain field.
How will this work impact your students?
One long-term objective has been to use the Professorship as a platform to attract more supply chain management majors and grow the program. Over the years, many student-centered events as well as research-oriented projects have taken place to further the legacy of the McMahon Endowed Professorship.
The Student Chapter of the Institute for Supply Management (ISM) has been greatly impacted through the Professorship. Each year at the beginning of the fall semester, a tour of the Port of Wilmington takes place. The tour enhances students’ understanding of how goods flow into and out of the state of North Carolina and expands their knowledge of a critical part of the supply chain.
Early each fall semester, at least two supply chain management students are sponsored as interns to the Council for Supply Chain Management Professionals (CSCMP) conference. The students work with other supply chain students from all over the United States in running the conference. The students also interact with industry professionals at the conference exposition as well as attend many educational sessions on real-world supply chain and logistics topics.
Also in the fall semester, at least four supply chain management students attend the Specialty Tool and Fastener Distributors Association (STAFDA) conference. The conference usually has around 3000 attendees. The students participate in the Supply Chain Case Challenge and have placed in the top three each year the competition has been held. The students also spend time at the next-generation luncheon networking with industry professionals and participate in on-site interviews with select companies. A number of students have been offered full time positions in the supply chain industry from these interviews.
Each May, two or more officers of the Student ISM Chapter attend the National ISM Conference. The students participate in the conference as volunteers. Being a volunteer gives them exposure to not only how the conference works but exposure to numerous supply chain professionals and industry firms. Many of these students have interviewed while at the conference and secured jobs in the field of supply chain management.
To date, more than 150 supply chain students have been involved in these activities and benefited directly from them.
What are your research goals for this gift?
My research agenda has three main components: writing of scholarly articles for submission to peer-reviewed journals in the field of supply chain management, revising and updating textbooks that I have authored or co-authored, and engaging in external consulting projects.
Current scholarly research topics include investigating the relationship of software as a service (SaaS) within the supply chain and studying the trends in the area of last-mile delivery within the supply chain.
The textbooks that are included in the research agenda are:
- Spreadsheet Modeling for Business Decision Modeling, KendallHunt (sole author)
- Supply Chain and Operations Management, Cognella (co-author)
- Statistics for Health Care Professionals, Jossey-Bass (co-author)
- Healthcare Operations and Supply Chain Management, Jossey-Bass (co-author)
- Corporate Sports Marketing, KendallHunt (co-author)
Recent external consulting projects have included an industry analysis of the amphibious aircraft market and supply chain and an external staffing and operational needs analysis for the purpose of developing a long-term funding needs plan for the North Carolina Department of Air Quality.