Investigating the relationship between supply chain innovation, risk management capabilities and competitive advantage in global supply chains

Artificial intelligence-driven innovation for enhancing supply chain resilience and performance under the effect of supply chain dynamism: an empirical investigation

Supply chain resilience (SCRes) and performance have become increasingly important in the wake of the recent supply chain disruptions caused by subsequent pandemics and crisis. Besides, the context of digitalization, integration, and globalization of the supply chain has raised an increasing awareness of advanced information processing techniques such as Artificial Intelligence (AI) in building SCRes and improving supply chain performance (SCP). The present study investigates the direct and indirect effects of AI, SCRes, and SCP under a context of dynamism and uncertainty of the supply chain. In doing so, we have conceptualized the use of AI in the supply chain on the organizational information processing theory (OIPT). The developed framework was evaluated using a structural equation modeling (SEM) approach. Survey data was collected from 279 firms representing different sizes, operating in various sectors, and countries. Our findings suggest that while AI has a direct impact on SCP in the short-term, it is recommended to exploit its information processing capabilities to build SCRes for long-lasting SCP. This study is among the first to provide empirical evidence on maximizing the benefits of AI capabilities to generate sustained SCP. The study could be further extended using a longitudinal investigation to explore more facets of the phenomenon.

Development of a supply chain risk index for manufacturing supply chains

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to identify, classify and prioritize supply chain risks faced by Indian micro small and medium manufacturing companies and to develop a comprehensive supply chain risk index.

Design/methodology/approach

Primary data has been collected from 354 Indian micro small and medium enterprises on the different supply chain risks faced by them. An extensive literature review followed by expert's interview has been carried out in order to finalize the supply chain risks. A hybrid methodology consists of AHP and Fuzzy TOPSIS is applied for the data analysis. A sensitivity analysis has been done to check the robustness and consistency of the results.

Findings

Results depict the importance of supply side and financial side risks faced by manufacturing supply chains, thus adding to the ongoing academic debate on the importance of supply chain finance solutions.

Research limitations/implications

Study is limited to the scope of an emerging market. Generalization of results needs more systematic studies around the world in different supply chains.

Practical implications

Supply chain managers can consider the benchmark framed in this study in order to identify the health of their supply chain and to efficiently employ supply chain risk management strategies.

Originality/value

The current study is novel in developing a supply chain risk index using a hybrid AHP-Fuzzy TOPSIS methodology with a comprehensive list of 26 supply chain risks under 5 categories for an MSME supply chain. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study incorporating financial risks in the development of a supply chain risk index.

Enhancing supply resilience in the COVID-19 pandemic: a case study on beauty and personal care retailers

Purpose

The COVID-19 pandemic interrupts the supply chain of products around the world. The supply chains of beauty and personal care products in Bangladesh are also heavily interrupted during this pandemic. While these products are perceived as essential by mass people, retailers are struggling to get the supply of the products and maintain a smooth delivery to the people. Considering such facts, the purposes of the study are to identify how the supply of retailers of these products is interrupted and how they can overcome the interruptions to ensure supply resilience.

Design/methodology/approach

A case study method has been used in this study. The data has been collected through interviews from 16 retailers of beauty and personal care products.

Findings

The results show that the supply of retailers of beauty and personal care products is interrupted in several ways. These include product shortage, limited delivery service, interruption of supplier payment, limited credit facility and irregularity in product delivery. To minimize the impacts of the interruptions and enhance supply resilience, retailers can undertake several strategies including intensive interactions and developing cooperation with the distributors and manufacturers, ordering bulk quantity, formulating an adjusted credit ratio and focusing on product availability over brand preference.

Research limitations/implications

The context of this study is limited to the beauty and personal care products of Bangladesh. Further study can be conducted in other countries and also supply chains of other products to enhance the generalizability of the findings of this study.

Practical implications

Supply interruptions are identified, and strategies are suggested to ensure the supply resilience of retailers of beauty and personal care products. If proposed strategies are implemented by retailers of these products, supply interruptions can be minimized.

Originality/value

The study contributes to the knowledge of the retail supply chain during a pandemic. It also contributes to the supply management and resilience of retailers. As the context is a developing country, the study also contributes to the literature on developing countries.

Operational resilience, disruption, and efficiency: Conceptual and empirical analyses

This research develops the notion of operational resilience and investigates its relationship with operational efficiency under differing conditions of operational disruption. Operational resilience is conceptualized as a multi-dimensional construct, consisting of two theoretically distinct components (i.e., disruption absorption and recoverability), which are argued to have unique effects on operational efficiency under varying operational disruption conditions. The study's hypotheses are empirically tested on primary data from a sample of 259 firms in a sub-Saharan African economy. Using structural equation modeling as an analytical tool, the study finds that both disruption absorption and recoverability have positive effects on operational efficiency. Additionally, the study finds that while the effect of disruption absorption on operational efficiency is stronger under conditions of high operational disruption, the effect of recoverability on operational efficiency is stronger under conditions of low operational disruption. A major implication of these findings is that the nature of operational resilience and the disruption circumstances under which it is deployed shape its efficiency value, thus advancing knowledge on the nuances associated with how and when operational resilience influences operational efficiency.

The Effect of Relational Embeddedness, Absorptive Capacity, and Learning Orientation on SMEs' Competitive Advantage

The combination of external new knowledge and organizational capability has become a cornerstone in the internationalized enterprises. Sources of knowledge acquisition are among the most valuable resources that an internationalized firm can achieve competitive advantage. This study aims to explore this phenomenon between knowledge sources and competitive advantage in the context of internationalized small and medium enterprises (SMEs) mainly by a quantitative approach. Based on contextual nature of resource–capability–competitive, absorptive capacity has long been a critical construct in organizational studies, as well as referring relational embeddedness as potential drivers of absorptive capacity, which is moderated by learning orientation. This study also investigates the mediating effect of absorptive capacity in terms of knowledge absorption and integration on international competitive advantage. To gain insights and provide essential implications for internationalized SMEs from the global economy, this study adopted purposive sampling to collect 211 valid responses. Via the partial least-squares structural modeling, the relationships among relational embeddedness, potential and realized absorptive capacity, and competitive advantage were measured. The results suggest that relational embeddedness positively influences potential and realized absorptive capacity with moderating effect of learning orientation. Potential and realized absorptive capacities have full mediating effect between relational embeddedness and competitive advantage. This study concludes insights and implications for research and practice.

A Conceptual Framework to Manage Resilience and Increase Sustainability in the Supply Chain

The challenges of global economies foster supply chains to have to increase their processes of collaboration and dependence between their nodes, generating an increase in the level of vulnerability to possible impacts and interruptions in their operations that may affect their sustainability. This has developed an emerging area of interest in supply chain management, considering resilience management as a strategic capability of companies, and causing an increase in this area of research. Additionally, supply chains should deal with the three dimensions of sustainability (economic, environmental, and social dimensions) by incorporating the three types of objectives in their strategy. Thus, there is a need to integrate both resilience and sustainability in supply chain management to increase competitiveness. In this paper, a systematic literature review is undertaken to analyze resilience management and its connection to increase supply chain sustainability. In the review, 232 articles published from 2000 to February 2020 in peer-reviewed journals in the Scopus and ScienceDirect databases are analyzed, classified, and synthesized. With the results, this paper develops a conceptual framework that integrates the fundamental elements for analyzing, measuring, and managing resilience to increase sustainability in the supply chain. Finally, conclusions, limitations, and future research lines are exposed.

Trends and applications of resilience analytics in supply chain modeling: systematic literature review in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic

The increasingly global context in which businesses operate supports innovation, but also increases uncertainty around supply chain disruptions. The COVID-19 pandemic clearly shows the lack of resilience in supply chains and the impact that disruptions may have on a global network scale as individual supply chain connections and nodes fail. This cascading failure underscores the need for the network analysis and advanced resilience analytics we find lacking in the existing supply chain literature. This paper reviews supply chain resilience literature that focuses on resilience modeling and quantification and connects the supply chain to other networks, including transportation and command and control. We observe a fast increase in the number of relevant papers (only 47 relevant papers were published in 2007–2016, while 94 were found in 2017–2019). We observe that specific disruption scenarios are used to develop and test supply chain resilience models, while uncertainty associated with threats including consideration of “unknown unknowns” remains rare. Publications that utilize more advanced models often focus just on supply chain networks and exclude associated system components such as transportation and command and control (C2) networks, which creates a gap in the research that needs to be bridged. The common goal of supply chain modeling is to optimize efficiency and reduce costs, but trade-offs of efficiency and leanness with flexibility and resilience may not be fully addressed. We conclude that a comprehensive approach to network resilience quantification encompassing the supply chain in the context of other social and physical networks is needed to address the emerging challenges in the field. The connection to systemic threats, such as disease pandemics, is specifically discussed.

Managing supply chain uncertainty arising from geopolitical disruptions: evidence from the pharmaceutical industry and brexit

Purpose

This paper examines how firms of different sizes formulate and implement strategies to achieve fit with an external environment disrupted by a geopolitical event. The context of the study is the pharmaceutical industry and how it managed the supply chain uncertainty created by the United Kingdom's decision to leave the European Union, or Brexit.

Design/methodology/approach

Data were collected longitudinally from the pro-Brexit vote on 23 June 2016, until the UK’s departure from the EU on 31 January 2020. Twenty-seven interviews were conducted in the pharmaceutical sector, including nineteen interviews with senior managers at eight case companies and eight interviews with experts working for trade associations and standards institutes. The interview findings were triangulated with Brexit policy and strategy documentation.

Findings

When formulating strategy, multi-national enterprises (MNEs) used worst case assumptions, while large firms, and small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) gathered knowledge as part of a “wait-and-see” strategy, allowing them to reduce perceptions of heightened supply chain uncertainty. Firms then implemented reactive and/or proactive strategies to mitigate supply chain risks.

Originality/value

The study elaborates on strategic contingency theory by identifying two important conditions for achieving strategic fit: first, companies deploy intangible resources, such as management time, to gather information and reduce perceptions of heightened supply chain uncertainty. Second, companies deploy tangible resources (supply chain redundancies, new supply chain assets) to lessen the negative outcomes of supply chain risks. Managers are provided with an empirical framework for mitigating supply chain uncertainty and risk originating from geopolitical disruptions.

Influence of Supply Chain Collaborative Innovation on Sustainable Development of Supply Chain: A Study on Chinese Enterprises

The recent trade friction between the two largest economies, US and China, is having a profound impact on the sustainable development of supply chains at a global scale. Supply chain collaborative innovation has not only become the main means for enterprises in various countries to cope with imponderable changes, but also been the driver of increasing supply chain dynamic capability and of achieving sustainable development of supply chains. Based on the survey data of 510 Chinese enterprises, this paper adopts the hierarchical regression analysis and a structural equation model to study the impact of supply chain collaborative innovation on the sustainable development of supply chains. The results show that: (1) Three modes of supply chain collaborative innovation (namely, technology collaborative innovation, management collaborative innovation, and market collaborative innovation) have different effects on supply chain dynamic capability and sustainable supply chain performance. (2) Supply chain dynamic capability plays a significant intermediary role between supply chain collaborative innovation and sustainable supply chain performance. (3) Supply chain technology collaborative innovation has the greatest direct impact on sustainable supply chain performance, followed by supply chain management collaborative innovation. However, the direct effect of supply chain market collaborative innovation on sustainable supply chain performance is not significant; under the intermediary role of dynamic capability, supply chain market collaborative innovation has a significant indirect effect on sustainable supply chain performance.

Supplying resilience through assessing diversity of responses to disruption

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the theory and practice of supply chain management in terms of how an organisation should structure its supply base to be resilient to supply uncertainties and disruptions. An empirical assessment of supplier response diversity is demonstrated, and the following research question posed: Is response diversity of suppliers positively associated with supply chain resilience, more positively than mere supplier diversity is?

Design/Methodology/Approach

Resilience is operationalised as the maintenance of sales of two food products in 27 southern Finnish retail stores during two distinct disruptions. Response diversity is operationalised as 1) diversity in the personnel sizes of slaughterhouse suppliers of pork under domestic strikes and as 2) evenness in the proportions of imports and domestic supply of food oil under global price volatility. A five-step quantitative assessment is performed.

Findings

Response diversity is positively related to the maintenance of sales, more positively than diversity of individual suppliers is.

Research limitations/Implications

Response diversity is an advancement to the theory of supply chain resilience and supply base management, and access to big data increases practical potential.

Practical implications

Empirical assessments of response diversity of suppliers provide buyer companies an effective means to enhance their supply base management for resilience.

Social implications

The proposed approach is useful for teaching and for authorities to enhance food security.

Originality/value

This first assessment of response diversity of supply chain operations presents an important advancement in the theory and practice of supply base management for resilience.

The nexus between supply chain analytic, innovation and robustness capability

Purpose

By drawing on knowledge-based view, this paper aims to test causal model linking supply chain analytics, innovation, robustness capability and firm age. More specifically, the mediating role of supply chain innovation on supply chain analytics and robustness capability link and the moderating role of firm age.

Design/methodology/approach

Survey data were procured from companies operating in the United Arab Emirates using a simple random sampling technique. The obtained data were analyzed with variance-based structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM).

Findings

The findings from PLS-SEM revealed that supply chain innovation fully mediate supply chain analytics and robustness capability associations. Findings from multi-group analysis (MGA) denote that firm age did not moderate any of the paths of the research model. Suggesting that the associations are similar for old, mid-aged and younger firms.

Originality/value

This work demonstrates that supply chain analytic is valuable tool that can foster innovation and robustness in supply chain. This work is among the first to scrutinize the variation among old, mid-aged and younger firms in supply chain analytics research stream. The paper concludes with implications for theory and practice.

Trends and applications of resilience analytics in supply chain modeling: systematic literature review in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic

The increasingly global context in which businesses operate supports innovation, but also increases uncertainty around supply chain disruptions. The COVID-19 pandemic clearly shows the lack of resilience in supply chains and the impact that disruptions may have on a global network scale as individual supply chain connections and nodes fail. This cascading failure underscores the need for the network analysis and advanced resilience analytics we find lacking in the existing supply chain literature. This paper reviews supply chain resilience literature that focuses on resilience modeling and quantification and connects the supply chain to other networks, including transportation and command and control. We observe a fast increase in the number of relevant papers (only 47 relevant papers were published in 2007-2016, while 94 were found in 2017-2019). We observe that specific disruption scenarios are used to develop and test supply chain resilience models, while uncertainty associated with threats including consideration of "unknown unknowns" remains rare. Publications that utilize more advanced models often focus just on supply chain networks and exclude associated system components such as transportation and command and control (C2) networks, which creates a gap in the research that needs to be bridged. The common goal of supply chain modeling is to optimize efficiency and reduce costs, but trade-offs of efficiency and leanness with flexibility and resilience may not be fully addressed. We conclude that a comprehensive approach to network resilience quantification encompassing the supply chain in the context of other social and physical networks is needed to address the emerging challenges in the field. The connection to systemic threats, such as disease pandemics, is specifically discussed.

Where is supply chain resilience research heading? A systematic and co-occurrence analysis

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to algorithmically and objectively investigate the previous literature on supply chain resilience (SCR) and advance theory by synthesizing new research domains.

Design/methodology/approach

A two-staged analysis approach, integrating systematic literature review (SLR) with VOSviewer co-occurrence analysis, was applied to the articles published between 2003 and 2018.

Findings

The authors find exponential growth in the literature on SCR over the last decade; however, there is still a gap for empirical research on numerous drivers, barriers, theories, moderators, mediators and research methods intertwined in building SCR.

Research limitations/implications

The review identifies major clusters in which SCR research is conducted and devises a future research agenda based on the findings of co-occurrence analysis.

Practical implications

The findings provide managers with a broad spectrum of factors that are indispensable to build resilience and inform business policy.

Originality/value

While some SLRs exist in the current literature of SCR, the authors undertake a unique analytical perspective, resulting in an idiosyncratic set of research domains for further investigation in the area.

Supply Chain Innovation in Scientific Research Collaboration

Innovations in supply chains and logistics, which help businesses reduce their costs and meet customer needs, have become increasingly vital. In this study, we first conducted a content analysis followed by a social network analysis to systematically review 104 research papers on supply chain innovation (SCI) that were published between 1987 and 2018. The results suggest that SCI research was originally concentrated in the United States and did not receive much attention in Europe and Asia, until more recently. An analysis of collaboration networks indicates that an SCI research community has just started to form, with the United Kingdom at the center of the international collaborative network. Implications of the study and directions for future research are summarized in detail, based on the systematic literature review.