Papers authored by faculty and doctoral graduates of the Sam M. Walton College of Business at the University of Arkansas have been selected as first and second place winners of the Best Paper Award for 2016-17 by Transportation Journal.

Dean Matthew A. Waller, the Sam M. Walton Leadership Chair, was a co-author of both papers.

A paper titled "Full Steam Ahead: Firms in the U.S. Economy Adjust Inventory for Changes in Transportation Costs But Not the Reverse" took the first place recognition. Other authors of the research study were:

• David Swanson, who earned a doctorate from the Walton College in 2012 and is an associate professor of marketing and logistics at the Coggin College of Business at the University of North Florida
• Brent Williams, Walton College's associate dean of Executive Education and Outreach and the Garrison Chair in Supply Chain Management
• Jingping Gu, associate professor in economics at the Walton College

The paper was selected for the honor by an editorial review board based on criteria that included originality, methodology and contribution to theory and practice. One of review board members said, "This paper challenges accepted inventory-transportation trade-off theory in logistics and SCM."

The paper selected for the second-place honor was titled "To Survive and Thrive under Hypercompetition: An Exploratory Analysis of the Influence of Strategic Purity on Truckload Motor-Carrier Financial Performance." One of the board members said of this paper, "Well done, multi-method research on a current topic. I like that the authors include managerial implications in addition to theoretic ones."

Authors of that paper, in addition to Waller and Swanson, were:

• Yao Jin, a doctoral graduate from the Walton College in 2013 and the Neil R. Anderson Endowed Assistant Professor at the Farmer College of Business at Miami University in Ohio
• John Ozment, Walton College professor of supply chain management