Christopher W. Craighead

The Severity of Supply Chain Disruptions: Design Characteristics and Mitigation Capabilities

Supply chain disruptions and the associated operational and financial risks represent the most pressing concern facing firms that compete in todays global marketplace. Extant research has not only confirmed the costly nature of supply chain disruptions but has also contributed relevant insights on such related issues as supply chain risks, vulnerability, resilience, and continuity. In this conceptual note, we focus on a relatively unexplored issue, asking and answering the question of how and why one supply chain disruption would be more severe than another. In doing so, we argue, de facto, that supply chain disruptions are unavoidable and, as a consequence, that all supply chains are inherently risky. Employing a multiple-method, multiple-source empirical research design, we derive novel insights, presented as six propositions that relate the severity of supply chain disruptions (i) to the three supply chain design characteristics of density, complexity, and node criticality and (ii) to the two supply chain mitigation capabilities of recovery and warning. These findings not only augment existing knowledge related to supply chain risk, vulnerability, resilience, and business continuity planning but also call into question the wisdom of pursuing such practices as supply base reduction, global sourcing, and sourcing from supply clusters.

An empirically derived agenda of critical research issues for managing supply-chain disruptions

While the literature related to supply-chain disruptions is informative, it has primarily focused on supply-chain disruptions from a general or high-level view of the phenomenon (e.g. supply-chain uncertainty, risk perceptions). Additionally, although most would agree that disruptions are present in all supply chains, there is a limited amount of information on how to deal with them from a practical perspective in both the short term and long term. Because of the importance of and research needs within this area, we launched a major multi-industry, multi-methodology empirical study on supply-chain disruptions. The study is multi-faceted in that it seeks insights into many issues within the broad area of global sourcing and supply-chain disruptions. Throughout our various interactions with industry, we found that several common themes and issues surfaced as being critical to successful disruption analysis and mitigation as well as resilient supply-chain design. Within this paper, we report on these key issues and discuss the needs within the supply-chain research to contribute to them.

Addressing Common Method Variance: Guidelines for Survey Research on Information Technology, Operations, and Supply Chain Management

Common method variance (CMV) is the amount of spurious correlation between variables that is created by using the same method-often a survey-to measure each variable. CMV may lead to erroneous conclusions about relationships between variables by inflating or deflating findings. We analyzed recent survey research in IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management, Journal of Operations Management, and Production and Operations Management to assess if and how scholars address CMV. We found that two-thirds of the relevant articles published between 2001 and 2009 did not formally address CMV, and many that did address CMV relied on relatively weak remedies. These findings have troubling implications for efforts to build knowledge within information technology, operations and supply chain management research. In an effort to strengthen future research designs, we provide recommendations to help scholars to better address CMV. Given the potentially severe effects of CMV, authors should apply the recommended CMV remedies within their survey-based studies, and reviewers should hold authors accountable when they fail to do so.

Risk Uncertainty and Supply Chain Decisions: A Real Options Perspective

Supply chain risk uncertainty can create severe repercussions, thus it is not surprising that research interest in supply chain risk has been growing. While extant inquiry is informative, there is a lack of investigations that center on supply chain investment decisions when facing high levels of risk uncertainty. Given the potential dollar value involved in these decisions, an understanding of how these supply chain decisions are made is of significant theoretical and practical importance. Real options theory, with its focus on decision making under conditions of uncertainty, is an appealing theoretical lens for this endeavor. In essence, real options theory asserts that managerial decisions center on creating and then exercising or not exercising certain opportunities. To date, theorizing about and investigations of real options have used firms as their focus. Not yet examined are real options within supply chains that cross firm boundaries and drive much of the competitive activity in the modern economy. Accordingly, we extend real options theory to the supply chain context by examining how different types of options are approached relative to supply chain project investments. Specifically, we theorize how the options will be related to perceived value under conditions of high supply chain risk uncertainty. Overall, our investigation builds knowledge by extending real options theory to the supply chain context and by providing evidence suggesting some options operate differently in supply chains than they do in firms.

Postponement: an evolving supply chain concept

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to assess and document the progress of postponement research, identify current gaps, and provide direction for future research efforts.Design/methodology/approach – Postponement literature published from 1999 to 2006 was reviewed.Findings – The review revealed a significant increase in the number of postponement research efforts, many of which at least partially addressed past challenges noted in previous research. Several opportunities to continue addressing these past challenges were identified. Future researchers are challenged to validate new postponement concepts and extend postponement research beyond its manufacturing context. Other challenges call for the continued assessment of the relationship between postponement and uncertainty and the investigation into the slow rate of postponement adoption among practitioners.Research limitations/implications – This effort is not an exhaustive review of all postponement research. This review does not consider unpublish...

Towards a “theoretical toolbox” for strategic sourcing

Purpose – The goal of this paper is to provide a broad foundation for future research in the area of strategic sourcing.Design/methodology/approach – The foundation is derived by drawing from various well‐established organizational theories. Specifically, strategic sourcing was viewed from the perspective of institutional theory, resource dependence theory, network theory, systems theory, resource/knowledge‐based views of the firm, transaction cost economics, agency theory, strategic choice theory, sociocognitive theory, and critical theory.Findings – By viewing strategic sourcing through the lens of ten organizational theories, this research provides multiple insights into many interrelated strategic sourcing questions, such as when to make, buy or ally, how many and which suppliers, and how to manage sourcing relationships. The paper offers a rich and diverse foundation to foster future theory‐building activities in sourcing and supply management research.Originality/value – While some of these theory b...

Operations management research: evolution and alternative future paths

Purpose – This paper aims to investigate the evolution of operations management (OM) research along two major dimensions from 1977 to 2003 and discusses possible paths for research progression in the future.Design/methodology/approach – To identify OM research papers, a careful definition of OM research was constructed based initially on earlier work and then more precisely extended through empirical analysis. The research on OM builds on a previous study that took snapshots of OM research in 1977 and 1987. It then extends and updates it through a content analysis of 593 articles published in 1995 and 2003 in five journals recognized for publishing OM research.Findings – The overall results illustrate that OM has evolved from heavily rationalistic, axiomatic analyses based on artificial reconstructions of reality toward more interpretive analyses based on natural observations of reality.Research limitations/implications – As the OM field continues to evolve, it is important to monitor and reassess publish...

Research approaches in logistics: Trends and alternative future directions

Purpose – The purpose of this research is to track the evolution of logistics research with a focus on the methods and orientation of the research from the past to the present. Specifically, this paper investigates the evolution of logistics research methodologies in an attempt to address previous calls for a paradigm discussion aimed at assessing the current direction and proposing a future direction for research in the logistics discipline.Design/methodology/approach – The authors chose a previously established framework which describes and evaluates alternative research paradigms. A content analysis of articles in selected journals allows published research of the logistics discipline to be evaluated and categorized. The categorization process uses a two‐dimensional framework which then allows the authors to classify research into cells in a matrix which represent a variety of research paradigms.Findings – The results illustrate that the methodologies employed in logistics have evolved during the perio...

Enabling the benefits of Supply Chain Management Systems: an empirical study of Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) in manufacturing

Although informative, the literature related to Supply Chain Management Systems (SCMS) needs to be developed further to provide insight related to the realized benefits of adopting firms. Specifically, there is a need to analyse empirically and systematically the potential benefits and variables that explain the differences in benefit variation. To contribute to this need, the study analysed SCMS benefits in four steps. First, drawing from survey responses of a diverse group of manufacturing plants, the study sought evidence of the claimed benefits found in the literature. Second, the study built on the claims and findings of previous researchers to formulate and test hypotheses related to factors that help explain differences in benefits. Third, once the explanatory variables were analysed in isolation, they were then analysed for the incremental effects. Finally, based on the results of the first three steps, the study refined the results to produce a synthesized explanatory SCMS benefit model.

Supply Chain Sourcing in Remanufacturing Operations: An Empirical Investigation of Remake Versus Buy

Despite recent attention to closed-loop supply chains and remanufacturing, there is scant information about what drives the re-make versus buy decision for original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) engaging in remanufacturing. Based on the extant remanufacturing literature and transaction cost economics, we formulated hypotheses related to the drivers of in-house versus contracted remanufacturing operations. The hypotheses were investigated via quantitative and qualitative data, thus offering a rich test of the formulated relationships. Consistent with the theory, the quantitative results showed that intellectual property, operational assets, and remanufacturing frequency are significant drivers of the re-make versus buy decision. However, counter to the theory, the quantitative results did not support the significance of brand reputation, technological uncertainty, condition uncertainty, product complexity, and volume uncertainty. The qualitative results were used to enrich these findings by providing theoretical extensions and pragmatic insights of the remake versus buy decision in remanufacturing.