Affiliations: Board of Advisors Professor and Director of the
Institute of International Business, J. Mack Robinson College of Business,
Georgia State University, Atlanta, GA, USA | Ph.D. Candidate in Marketing, J. Mack Robinson College
of Business, Georgia State University, Atlanta, GA, USA
Note: [] Corresponding author: Daniel Bello, Board of Advisors Professor
and Director of the Institute of International Business, J. Mack Robinson
College of Business, Georgia State University, Atlanta, GA, 30303, USA. E-mail:
[email protected]
Abstract: Many severe and costly supply network disruptions have been
documented in the academic and business literatures, and the issue is receiving
increased coverage and consideration by scholars and practitioners. It is
widely acknowledged that recent trends in supply network management, such as
greater global interconnectivity, make firms more susceptible to disruption
risk than ever before. Further, research has demonstrated that firms are
generally not able to quickly recover from the negative economic impacts
associated with supply disruptions. Passive acceptance of disruptions is not a
viable option; therefore, firms face a pressing need to develop superior
disruption risk management capabilities. Supply network risk management has been defined as the management of
external and supply network risk through a coordinated approach among supply
network members to reduce vulnerability in the supply chain. Today's global
manufacturing networks are complex socio-technical systems, which require
socio-technical strategies for managing disruption risks. While the extant
research heavily focuses on `hard' technical strategies such as second sourcing
and inventory management, 'soft' socio strategies have received minimal
attention. This chapter highlights socio factors such as relational closeness
that are also crucial for supply partners to jointly resolve problems and
contributes to the literature on disruption risk management by identifying
associations between specific characteristics of relationships between
partners, effective risk identification and joint problem resolution.
Specifically, the chapter focuses on the dyadic relationships between a global
manufacturing firm and its first tier suppliers. This dyad is the first key
link in the supply network and the research conclusions may be applied to other
dyadic links in the global network of suppliers.
Keywords: Global supply network, supply disruption risk, collaboration, joint problem resolution, relationship closeness, trust, risk magnitude, risk likelihood
