It is well established that supply chain disruptions can have a severe negative impact on firms and general wisdom suggests that this impact can be mitigated by quick responses. Aside from a few anecdotes, however, little is known about the decision‐making process that leads to speedy responses and about its impeding and supporting antecedents. Using the organizational information‐processing perspective, this empirical study unravels the disruption management process along a sequence of four stages—disruption recognition, disruption diagnosis, response development, and response implementation—and hypothesizes constraining and mediating effects of these stages. The findings contribute to an improved understanding of the role that the decision stages play in mitigating supply chain disruptions, and confirm the prediction that the speed with which information is processed and the stages are worked through positively affects supply chain performance. In addition, the findings suggest that one of the stages, diagnosis, acts as a constraining factor to the other stages. The stages also play a mediating role between the impact that the disruption has and a firm's readiness (prior to a disruption), dependence on a key supplier, and supply chain complexity. This provides guidance to decision makers in the application of resources both prior to a negative event and during a disruption recovery.

G iven their proclivity to occur despite managers' best efforts, disruptions often result in lost sales, lead to large financial losses, and have a negative impact on shareholder wealth and operating performance. Less attention, however, has been paid to improving the process of managing a disruption from its discovery through to complete recovery. This entire process is not, in fact, fully understood. Clearer insights are needed surrounding the following issues: factors influencing the recovery process, how those factors interact to play a role in managerial decision making, and the company's actual ability to recover. While it is possible to determine basic recovery process factors, a more complete picture of disruption management can be built from analysis of data collected through qualitative in-depth interviews. This research delivers insights around the interactions and relationships among factors, providing the foundation for a set of propositions useful for further investigation in the following areas: discovery of the disruption event, causes of the event, and recovery performance. One finding indicates that while internal disruptions are faster to recover from, they more likely lead to negative perceptions about the recovery performance outcome.

No abstract

In this paper we investigate the role of two types of problem solving approaches on supply chain performance. Additionally, we investigate how the level of information availability moderates problem solving approach on supply chain performance. We draw on construal level theory from the experimental psychology literature to explain how the problem solving approaches (abstract problem solving approach vs. concrete problem solving approach) contribute to supply chain performance. From this foundation, we run a series of behavioral experiments to test our hypotheses that problem solving approaches and information availability impact supply chain performance as presented in the beer distribution game. A key finding of this study is that individuals who take an abstract problem solving approach are able to perform better than individuals who take a concrete problem solving approach in the context of limited information availability. However, in the context of complete information availability, the impact of both types of problem solving approaches on performance becomes negligible.

Employee retention is a critical and challenging workplace issue including in the U.S. motor carrier industry with its perennially high driver turnover rates. Truck driver retention affects supply chain performance because of its impact on carrier operating safety and the service capacity of the trucking industry. Government authorities exert an influence on truck driver retention via the safety policies, labor policies, and regulations they mandate. A proposed rule requiring electronic on‐board recorders of some carrier drivers offers an opportunity to investigate the influence of government policy on driver work intentions. In this study we examine this influence through the lens of procedural justice theory. Drawing on procedural justice literature, we develop a model which examines the procedural justice perceptions of commercial drivers and the subsequent impact on their decision‐making behavior, including their organizational and industry intentions to remain or quit.