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This paper systematically reviews the literature on the impact of geopolitical disruptions on supply chains to identify primary discourses, emergent themes and key gaps to set a future research agenda. The guiding research question is ‘how do geopolitical disruptions affect the configuration, flow, and management of global supply chains?’. The study applies a systematic literature review of 50 papers from the Association of Business Schools’ (ABS) ranked academic journals in the fields of operations, production, and supply chain management published between 1995 and 2022. Through an in-depth literature analysis, this paper demarcates geopolitical disruptions and the resulting impact on supply chains as a new subfield of research. The results indicate that the impact of geopolitical disruptions on supply chains can be mitigated through: (1) supply chain re-design including regionalisation, back-shoring, and moving away from just-in-time delivery models as well as (2) the implementation of emerging technologies, such as blockchain, 3D printing and artificial intelligence, to improve supply chain transparency and the development of modularised manufacturing. This paper is one of the first to define the current state of research and thinking on the impact of geopolitical disruptions on supply chains, laying a firm foundation for future research by setting a detailed research agenda based on identified gaps.

Humanity's intrusion into nature—with the objective of selling animals and plants as medicine, food, and tourist attractions—is detrimental not only to biodiversity and the health of ecosystems but also to local communities, global society, and human health. Often, traffickers exploit legal supply chains to secretly move endangered species and protected wildlife to end consumers. Serendipitous discoveries of wildlife trafficking attempts raise concerns that existing efforts to prevent wildlife trafficking and other criminal exploitation of legal supply chains brought about by international laws, regulations, and voluntary initiatives may often fail. Indeed, most supply chains are designed for economic purposes such as efficiency or responsiveness rather than security. Scholarship in supply chain management has thus far dedicated scarce attention to the overarching phenomenon of illegal exploitation of otherwise legal supply chains, referred to as “supply chain infiltration.” Because we were unable to speak with perpetrators directly, we obtained insights from expert stakeholders in order to study the delicate and covert topic of what makes supply chains vulnerable to wildlife trafficking, as well as how this vulnerability can be mitigated. Our data set comprises 37 semi-structured interviews with knowledgeable stakeholders concerning wildlife trafficking, specifically in maritime supply chains. This research develops a model that explains supply-chain-related vulnerabilities to wildlife trafficking and elaborates regarding how respective actors can contribute in addressing this understudied issue. We introduce the concept of “societal supply chain risk” to refer to hazards that emanate from or materialize within supply chains, which primarily affect actors in the supply chain context—and possibly even humanity in its entirety. Our research calls for more supply chain research, exploring situations in which individual firms may not be affected but can contribute to t

Purpose The purpose of this article is to discuss the theme of managing operations and supply chains in the so-called “new normal”. It reflects the themes emerging from recent research and how these might be conceptualized. Design/methodology/approach The article reviews research presented at the EurOMA 2021 conference and eight papers subsequently developed into full journal papers. It considers conceptual themes contained in these papers and how they reflect recent turbulent events in the external business environment. Findings The article notes the themes of resilience in relation to the Covid-19 pandemic, environmental sustainability, especially climate change and the Sustainable Development Goals, and the significance of digital technologies. Additional themes relating to inter-organizational relationships, complexity and manager cognition are also considered. In order to provide useful insights for future disruptions, general concepts on epistemology and responsiveness are described. Originality/value The article discusses general principles across cutting-edge research in operations and supply chain management, to support improved performance to add economic and social value.

This study explores the impact of supply chain collaboration on eco-innovations in the context of 220 Chinese manufacturing supplier firms involved in global supply chain networks. It investigates how supplier and customer collaborations help firms to enhance product eco-innovations, and/or process eco-innovations, and how the institutional context (i.e., regulatory, market, and community pressures) influences these relationships. The structural equation modeling approach is used to analyze the data captured from medium and large manufacturing enterprises in three major sectors: automotive, electronics, and textiles. The results show that community pressure has a positive effect on supplier collaboration, which further leads to enhanced process eco-innovation. On the other hand, the findings indicate that while market pressure enhances customer collaboration, this does not reinforce product eco-innovation. Contrary to our expectation, regulatory pressures do not impact supplier or customer collaboration for innovation. Overall, different institutional factors indicate divergent effects on supply chain collaboration and product/process eco-innovation. The importance of normative pressures, such as those applied through the local community and interest groups, for eco-innovations in production processes is further discussed as a typical feature of the institutional environment of Chinese supplier firms.

As recently stakeholders complain about the use of conflict minerals in consumer products that are often invisible to them in final products, firms across industries implement conflict mineral management practices. Conflict minerals are those, whose systemic exploitation and trade contribute to human right violations in the country of extraction and surrounding areas. Particularly, supply chain managers in the Western world are challenged taking reasonable steps to identify and prevent risks associated with these resources due to the globally dispersed nature of supply chains and the opacity of the origin of commodities. Supply chain due diligence (SCDD) represents a holistic concept to proactively manage supply chains reducing the likelihood of the use of conflict minerals effectively. Based on an exploratory study with 27 semi-structured interviews within five European industries, we provide insights into patterns of implementation, key motivational factors, barriers and enablers, and impacts of SCDD in mineral supply chains. Our results contribute to both theory and practice as we provide first insights to SCDD practices and make recommendations for an industry-wide implementation of SCDD. Altogether, this study provides the basis for future theory testing research in the context of SCDD and conflict mineral management.

Buying firms are increasingly confronted with compliance scandals in their upstream supply chain, for which they are held accountable by their stakeholders. Purely symbolic practices, typically referred to as greenwashing, as well as substantive practices, such as green supplier championing, are thus receiving widespread attention in business practices and academia alike. In this study, we reveal the impact of two opposing leadership dimensions following the concepts of ethical and transactional leadership as antecedents for green supplier championing and greenwashing. We particularly address whether these antecedents have a complementary or a counterproductive effect on green supplier championing and greenwashing. Furthermore, we investigate the complementary impact of incentives and the two leadership styles on achieving sustainability behavior. The resulting model is tested using a path analysis based on a data set of 118 firms located in Germany. We find support for the positive impact of ethical leadership on green supplier championing but also a non-significant negative impact on greenwashing. Greenwashing is significantly impacted by leadership styles reflecting obedience to authority, and further moderated by ethical incentives. Interestingly, ethical incentives do not moderate the impact of ethical leadership on green supplier championing. Finally, we discuss implications for theory and business practice.

The pharmaceutical industry is facing an era of fundamental transformation, with new products, markets, and regulations requiring changes to governance, risk and supply chain management. These represent both threats and opportunities to the industry, for those who are able to harness developments. Through the provision of example scenarios, this report aims to provide pharmaceutical supply chain managers with the necessary information to help them find the right strategic solutions for their companies over the next ten years. Based on a thorough review of current practical and academic literature, the research team identified twelve future key developments with the potential to impact pharmaceutical supply chains over the next ten years (2015-2025). Based on assessments by 30 European pharmaceutical managers, the report provides analysis of the probability and impact of each development on pharmaceutical supply chains. It scopes the extent to which pharmaceutical supply chain managers welcome and feel able to influence each development. The authors of the report are Prof. Dr. Constantin Blome, University of Sussex, UK and GSK Vaccines Chaired Professor at Université catholique de Louvain, Belgium, as well as Martin Schleper and Hannes Hofmann from EBS University, Germany.