Future research of supply chain resilience: Network perspectives and incorporation of more stakeholders

Abstract

In recent years, global supply chains face great challenges driven by events such as trade wars, the Covid-19 pandemic, and the Russia-Ukraine War. Since the disruptions caused by such shocks are more systematic and the duration is harder to predict compared to natural disasters or other operational risks, we highlight two features for future supply chain research: network perspectives and incorporation of more stakeholders such as governments that can influence overarching performances of industrial and supply chains. From the network perspective, we review the literature on vulnerable nodes & links identification, risk propagation modeling, network resilience measures, and disruption mitigation strategies. We suggest promising research directions such as deriving non-probabilistic resilience measures that can incorporate dynamics, extending existing methods for bottleneck detection to the network setting, balancing efficiency and resilience in a more sophisticated way, etc. In terms of incorporating more stakeholders’ roles in supply chain network decisions, we review the relevant literature and discuss research opportunities on governments’ roles in global supply chains (i.e., an external circulation perspective) and in incentivizing firms’ R&D and stimulating domestic demand (i.e., an internal circulation perspective). We suggest topics including global supply chain resilience evaluation using trade networks, technology networks, and firm ownership networks, the impact of trade policies with network perspectives, design of tariff and non-tariff measures under trade agreements, domestic industry relocation, evaluating the effects of government subsidies on firms’ long-term innovation, and design of subsidy strategies for supply chain stability and resilience. We believe research on supply chain resilience will thrive in the years ahead, better supporting firms’ and governments’ decisions.