Professor Mickey Howard
Professor in Sustainable Supply Chain Management and Deputy Head of Department of Operations and Analytics
M.B.Howard@exeter.ac.uk
2153
+44 (0) 1392 722153
Streatham Court 0.89
Streatham Court, University of Exeter, Rennes Drive, Exeter, EX4 4PU, UK
Overview
Prof Mickey Howard is Professor of Supply Chain Management at the University of Exeter Business School. He started at Exeter in 2009 and served for 6 years as Director of Research for the management department. As a participant in numerous research grants, Mickey has published over 150 research papers exploring the procurement of complex performance, buyer-supplier relationships, collaborative technologies, sustainable supply chain management and circular economy implementation. He is a regular speaker at UK government events and international conferences such as BAM, IPSERA, EUROMA & Academy of Management. He is co-author of the award winning textbook ‘Purchasing & Supply Chain Management: A Sustainability Perspective’ (2014, 2018) Routledge UK, and edited book ‘Procuring Complex Performance’ (2011) Routledge New York, recently translated into Chinese. He has supervised 6 PhD students to completion.
His research spans the implementation of sustainable business systems and transition to the circular economy from an operations & supply chain perspective. His most recent work explores waste identification and value recapture as part of an EPSRC ‘Modelling supply chain optimisation in the food and beverages industry’ project which helps SMEs in south-west England work towards the circular economy. Over the past decade he has developed several systems based mapping tools to minimise materials, water, energy & carbon related waste and maximise circular maturity. He advocates a circular business advantage approach which enables closer collaboration with external partners, helping both business and local authorities shape regional economic policy towards long-term resiliency. Mickey has over 25 years’ experience of working with large corporations in the global automotive, IT systems and defence sectors exploring supply chain strategy, customer order fulfilment and procurement of complex performance.
He has published in a wide range of Business & Management academic journals, including Omega: International Journal of Management Science, Journal of Strategic Information Systems, British Journal of Management, Industrial Marketing Management, International Journal of Operations & Production Management, Supply Chain Management: An International Journal, Journal of Cleaner Production, International Journal of Production Research and Journal of Purchasing & Supply Management.
Qualifications
PhD (Bath), MBA (Durham), BA Honors (Northumbria)
Research
Research interests
My research is grounded in Operations & Supply Chain Management and includes elements of innovation and systems thinking. I explore theories of the firm (e.g. RBV, Natural RBV, Dynamic capabilities), Agency (e.g. principle-agent, networks), Institutional theory and System Dynamics. My recent work examines the interface between inter-organizational relationships, governance mechanisms and the implementation of sustainable & circular business models. I am currently engaged in the following research themes and welcome quality research proposals from prospective doctoral students:
- Sustainable supply chain management (SSCM) - I explore the role of purchasing and supply chain management in stimulating a more sustainable regional, national & global economy. I first taught SSCM on the One Planet MBA at Exeter and have been involved in several major grants: the Clear about Carbon project in Cornwall (2010-2014), and the Circular Economy Modelling project (2016-2019) described further below. My 2014, 2018 (2nd edition) award winning textbook with co-authors Profs Johnsen and Miemczyk was the first in its field to introduce a sustainability perspective across all aspects of purchasing & supply chain management.
- Circular economy (CE) implementation - I co-founded the Circular Economy Business Forum at Exeter in 2015 to assist firms in recapturing value from activities such as recycling, re-use, remanufacture, leasing and product life extension. In 2016 it was amalgamated into the Sustainability & Circular Economy research cluster. I was co-investigator (with Prof Steffen Boehm, Pi) on a £483,000 EPSRC grant on ‘Modelling supply chain optimisation in the food and beverages industry: Helping SMEs in South West England work towards the circular economy’. Emerging from this project are the multilevel challenges i.e. firm, supply chain, ecosystem around how we implement the circular economy, which is of major interest to me. The increasing significance of CE in business & society today is reflected in the launch of our Exeter Centre for Circular Economy led by Prof Peter Hopkinson.
- Procuring complex performance (PCP) - my work on PCP originates back to when I was based at the University of Bath, School of Management (1999-2009). It involves studying the temporal dynamics between manufacturing contractors and public buyer organizations as they adopt a through-life approach to managing the procurement of complex platforms and facilities e.g. warships, dockyards, airport terminals, hospitals etc. My 2011 edited book with Nigel Caldwell includes a number of PCP related themes which are explored further in a 2014 IJOPM journal special issue. My 2019 BJM article discusses the dysfunctional effects on performance of governance mechanisms by defence partners during the commissioning of capital warships over extended periods of time e.g. 10 - 30 years.
Publications
Books
Journal articles
Chapters
Conferences
Reports
External Engagement and Impact
External positions
- External advisor for MSc Engineering Management programs, University of Bath, (2017)
- External examiner (PhD) for Universities of Lancaster (2012), Surrey (2015), Bath (2016), and Aalto (2017)
- Chairman for the Disruptive Innovation Festival live presentation and panel session held simultaneously between Exeter and Yokohama University, Japan (2015)
- Chairman for the advisory board of the ESF ‘Clear About Carbon’ project (2011)
- Advisor to the Chartered Institute of Purchasing & Supply Education Executive
- Reviewer for the Journal of Supply Chain Management, International Journal of Operations & Production Management, and Supply Chain Management: An International Journal.