Distinguished supply chain professor Blackhurst joins Harbert faculty

An esteemed researcher, passionate educator and respected academic leader, Jennifer Blackhurst has joined the Harbert College of Business as the McWane Chair in Supply Chain Management.

“I am thrilled to welcome Dr. Blackhurst as the inaugural McWane Chair in Supply Chain Management,” said Harbert Dean Jennifer Mueller-Phillips. “In addition to her impressive record as a scholar, she brings a passion for teaching and industry outreach, and a collaborative spirit that resonates with the Harbert College. Her expertise in supply chain resilience and disruption management is nationally recognized, and I know she will have a meaningful impact on our students, faculty, and industry partners.”

Blackhurst’s research, which is both highly cited by fellow academics and utilized by industry professionals, broadly examines supply chain management risk and how to handle supply chain disruptions, which in recent years have included the pandemic shutdowns, labor strikes, and tariffs, as well as other less-publicized events.

“Supply chains experience disruptions every day, so I look at how [companies] can prepare, respond and maybe even avoid bad things from happening to keep things running smoothly,” said Blackhurst, who spent the last 11 years at the University of Iowa.

Specifically, she focuses on modeling supply chain systems to better understand how they operate and how disruptions propagate to far-reaching areas of the system network.

Impactful research

In one recent study that she conducted with fellow Iowa researchers, Blackhurst and her colleagues developed a model that simulates supply chain behavior over time considering varying disruption scenarios.

She and her team demonstrated how and under what circumstances companies should deploy one of two adaptive strategies to improve their reliance against supply chain disruptions. They determined that a reactive strategy works best when the disruption occurs among first-tier/direct suppliers and will have an immediate impact on operations, while a proactive strategy works best in response to a distant disruption occurring in the supply chain, but which doesn’t immediately affect the company’s operations.

“In the study, Jennifer considered feedback loops, which have been central to the work of several leading scholars and PhD students in our department,” said Glenn Richey, a Harbert Eminent Scholar in Supply Chain Management. “The findings highlight that fostering modularity and leveraging real-time information enhances system resilience. Proactively building resilience is needed in today’s supply chains—not just as a reaction to surprises.”

Their paper won the Journal of Operations Management 2024 Ambassador Award for being among the most influential papers published in core operations management journals.

In another groundbreaking paper that she published while on the faculty at Iowa State University, Blackhurst and research collaborators were the first to determine how and why one supply chain disruption would be more severe than another—providing valuable insight for companies trying to mitigate the financial risks associated with disruptions.

She conducted this 2007 research study with Christopher Craighead, who was then at Auburn, along with colleagues from the University of Minnesota and North Carolina State University. They published their findings in Decision Sciences.

Several years later, their paper was recognized for its proven impact from more than 15,000 other papers published in leading business, management and economic journals such as the Harvard Business Review, Journal of Marketing and Journal of Finance, among other top-tier publications.

Beginning her Auburn career

At Auburn, Blackhurst plans to focus her research on how companies structure and manage relationships in the supply chain so they’re not inadvertently exposing themselves to risk—an important yet challenging area because of the difficulty seeing beyond one’s tier-one, direct suppliers.

“So [as a company], I know who my tier-one suppliers are, but I don't know who their suppliers are. And I don't know all of the different connections that my supplier might have working with a competitor,” she explained. “So, we want to understand structures and relationships.”

Some avenues of research exploration include determining how much business a company is giving its current supplier versus a competitor and identifying weak points in a company’s supply chain—all while various risks continually threaten supply chains.

Blackhurst was drawn to Auburn primarily for the opportunity to collaborate and conduct research with exceptional faculty and graduate students.

“It’s the people and to be a part of such a strong supply chain group—that’s why I chose to come to Auburn,” she said, referencing the Department of Supply Chain Management’s top 20 ranking.  

In the fall, Blackhurst will teach supply chain strategy (SCMN 7800).

She’s also excited to be a part of the  Center for Supply Chain Innovation, which provides insightful supply chain research, professional enrichment programs, and industry-ready student talent.

“I’m looking forward to leveraging the center’s industry connections, working more closely with companies and actual company data,” she said. “We do this amazing research and publish in academic journals, and the center helps us make a difference with companies.”

Academic leadership

Blackhurst comes to Auburn having served as a professor of business analytics and associate dean of graduate and professional programs at Iowa’s Tippie College of Business, where she and her colleagues developed a new online executive MBA degree, which today enrolls more than 2,000 students and is ranked in the top 25 programs nationwide by U.S. News & World Report.

“We’ve been able to impact thousands of students, letting them continue their lifelong education journey, upskill quickly, advance their careers and change the trajectory of their and their families’ lives,” she said. “Working with a team of super-talented staff there was amazing.”

An award-winning instructor, Blackhurst has a special fondness for teaching graduate and professional students.

“Part of why I love teaching graduate-level working professionals is they’re able to take something that we talk about in class and literally apply it the next day [in their jobs],” she said. “I also learn a lot from them about new challenges they’re facing in supply chain.”

She has made valuable contributions to the supply chain management discipline through her work as an associate editor of Decision Sciences and Journal of Business Logistics—two of the preeminent research publications in the field.

“Jennifer is one of the truly nice people in our field,” said Richey. “Students, alumni, business partners and colleagues are all going to love our new addition. We’re lucky and excited to have her as part of the Auburn Family.”

Before entering academia, Blackhurst worked in the aerospace industry for three years. She earned her MS and BS degrees in industrial and manufacturing systems engineering from Ohio University and her doctorate in industrial engineering from the University of Iowa.

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Learn more about Harbert College's Supply Chain Management program.