Career achievement award is the most valuable given by the Institute for Supply Management

Thunderbird School of Global Management Professor Joseph L. Cavinato, Ph.D. has been awarded the J. Shipman Gold Medal, the highest award given by the Institute for Supply Management™. The award was given May 8 during the 97th annual International Supply Management Conference in Baltimore.

The J. Shipman Gold Medal, created in 1931, is presented to individuals who advance the supply management field through unselfish, sincere and persistent efforts in both academic and nonacademic areas.

Professor Cavinato joined Thunderbird’s faculty in 2003 and created the school’s popular global supply chain leadership course. Unlike procurement programs taught at other schools, Cavinato’s course considers supply issues from the senior leadership perspective. Cavinato is also the executive director of the A.T. Kearney Center for Strategic Supply Leadership at ISM, the largest supply management association in the world. He has consulted for global powerhouses such as Arthur D. Little in South Africa, Kodak in Singapore, the Ehle Institute in Japan, food-industry giant Bimbo in Mexico, and Unilever in the United Kingdom.

Cavinato earned his Ph.D. from Pennsylvania State University in 1975. He spent three years at the University of Georgia's Terry College of Business and then returned to Penn State in 1978, where he remained on the faculty for the next 21 years. At Penn State, Cavinato developed a senior-level purchasing course in the undergraduate program and an MBA elective course. He next developed a two-week executive program in purchasing and materials management that was offered from 1984 through the late 1990s.

In 1990 Cavinato began an ongoing project involving interviews with managers in different departments at various companies and asking them to reflect on three simple questions designed to ascertain issues, challenges and opportunities for the next three to five years. To date Cavinato has interviewed more than 6,500 managers and executives at 937 companies on six continents. Insights gleaned from the interviews frequently serve as the foundation for Cavinato's teaching, writing and speeches.

He has authored more than 200 academic articles, industry magazine pieces and white papers on global supply chains, business models, logistics and transportation, corporate social responsibility and top-line growth.