Supply chain resilience in a developing country context: a case study on the interconnectedness of threats, strategies and outcomes

Abstract

Purpose: In the few prior empirical studies on Supply Chain Resilience (SCRES), the focus has been on the developed world. Yet organisations in developing countries constitute a significant part of global supply chains and have also experienced the disastrous effects of supply chain failures. The purpose of this paper is therefore to empirically investigate SCRES in a developing country context, and to show that this also provides theoretical insights into the nature of what we mean by resilience. Design/methodology/approach: Using a case study approach, a supply network of 20 manufacturing firms in Uganda is analysed based on a total of 45 interviews. Findings: The perceived threats to SCRES in this context are mainly small-scale, chronic disruptive events rather than the discrete, large-scale catastrophic events typically emphasised in the literature. The data reveals how threats of disruption, resilience strategies, and outcomes are interrelated in complex, coupled and non-linear ways. These interrelationships are explained by the political, cultural, and territorial embeddedness of the supply network in a developing country. Further, this embeddedness contributes to the phenomenon of supply chain risk migration, whereby an attempt to mitigate one threat produces another threat and/or shifts the threat to another point in the supply network. Practical implications: Managers should be aware, for example, of potential risk migration from one threat to another when crafting strategies to build SCRES. Equally, the potential for risk migration across the supply network means managers should look at the supply chain holistically because actors along the chain are so interconnected. Originality/value: The paper goes beyond the extant literature by highlighting how SCRES is not only about responding to specific, isolated threats but about the continuous management of risk migration. It demonstrates that resilience requires both an understanding of the interconnectedness of threats, strategies, and outcomes and an understanding of the embeddedness of the supply network. Finally, our focus on the context of a developing country reveals that resilience should be equally concerned both with smaller in scale, chronic disruptions and with occasional, large-scale catastrophic events.

Dealing with the unpredictable: supply chain resilience

“…Lee et al, 1997). A broader focus could, for example, identify the transformation or migration of a risk from one point in the network to another, as has been shown by Tukamuhabwa et al (2017). As such, supply chains that are disrupted and aim to be resilient could rethink where redundancy can be located in their chain, specifically if it relates to additional inventory.…”

“…Consequently, SCRes has become a topic of significant academic attention (e.g. Sheffi, 2005;Brandon-Jones et al, 2014;Ambulkar et al, 2015;Hohenstein et al, 2015;Scholten and Schilder, 2015;Stevenson and Busby, 2015;Kamalahmadi and Parast, 2016;Purvis et al, 2016;Tukamuhabwa et al, 2017;MacDonald et al, 2018;Scholten et al, 2019). Further, resilience as a theme has become important not only in industries such as insurance, food, automotive, and electronics but also as an area for governmental and inter-governmental attention, as reflected in calls for H2020 projects on, for instance, city resilience.…”

Building routines for non-routine events: supply chain resilience learning mechanisms and their antecedents

“…For a complete overview of SCRes strategies and capabilities, see reviews from Tukamuhabwa et al (2015), Hohenstein et al (2015), Kamalahmadi and Parast (2016) or Ali et al (2017). The field of SCRes has also been further developed by applying, testing and exploring various strategies and capabilities in different contexts such as e.g., agri-cultural supply chain (Stone and Rahimifard, 2018), developing countries (Tukamuhabwa et al, 2017) or the oil and gas industry (Urciuoli et al, 2014).…”

Non-linear effects of relational capital on supply-side resilience

“…Many contemporary organisations are interconnected and interdependent meaning the problems experienced by one organisation can impede the functioning of another (Tukamuhabwa et al, 2017). Therefore, a focal firm needs to effectively collaborate with other organisations (Scholten and Schilder, 2015;Dabhilkar et al, 2016), especially with first-tier suppliers as they are the predominant source of supply chain disruptions (Business Continuity Institute, 2017).…”