Managing Supply Chain Disruptions

Abstract

Supply Chain Management has become an important part of the business environment and the U.S. economy. The move towards improved efficiency and effectiveness for businesses, organizations, and process owners has forced many managers to think beyond traditional management techniques utilized in typical functional paradigms. As these supply chain process have become more streamlined the issue of increased risk and uncertainty has become ever more important. Many methods of controlling risk have been introduced and utilized by the research and practitioner fields, however, few provide a holistic view of what causes uncertainty, methods of dealing with that uncertainty, and how these methods are adopted by an organization. This dissertation research effort incorporates three distinct efforts combined under a single umbrella topic. The first paper focuses on the underlying cause of uncertainty by proposing multiple levels of interdependence experienced by organizations within a hypothetical supply chain. Coordination strategies are then identified as coping mechanisms for interdependence issues. The second paper in this series focuses on one specific method of coordination, the contingency planning process. Characteristics of a contingency planning process are identified and their relationship to organizational flexibility is measured utilizing a regression technique. The third portion of the umbrella research effort addresses contingency planning as an innovation. Based on the research in paper two, contingency planning is a useful coordination technique for dealing with supply chain disruptions. This paper explores the attributes of a planning process that will most likely lead to successful innovation adoption. Each model presents broad perspective based on current literature and, hopefully, provides the foundation for many future research efforts.