《外文原稿Perspectivesonriskmanagementinsupplychains.docx》由会员分享，可在线阅读，更多相关《外文原稿Perspectivesonriskmanagementinsupplychains.docx（11页珍藏版）》请在得力文库 - 分享文档赚钱的网站上搜索。
1、Perspectives on risk management in supply chainsAbstractManaging risk in supply chains is an important topic in supply chain management. The topics importance is due to several industry trends currently in place: increase in strategic outsourcing by firms, globalizations of markets, increasing relia
2、nce on suppliers for specialized capabilities and innovation, reliance on supply networks for competitive advantage, and emergence of information technologies that make it possible to control and coordinate extended supply chains. This article identifies some important aspects of risk management in
3、supply chains and summarizes the four articles that are in this special issue. This emerging area of research interest deserves considerable attention and it is our hope that the articles in this special issue would spur additional research on this important topic.1 IntroductionManaging risk in supp
4、ly chains has emerged as an important topic in supply chain management. The topic derives its importance due to several industry trends currently in place: increase in strategic outsourcing by firms, globalizations of markets, increasing reliance on suppliers for specialized capabilities and innovat
5、ion, reliance on supply networks for competitive advantage, and emergence of information technologies that make it possible to control and coordinate extended supply chains. These trends have manifested themselves in an increase in outsourcing and off-shoring of manufacturing and R&D activities, low
6、 cost country (LCC) sourcing, and collaboration with international supplier partners (Fisher, 1997; Lee, 2002). While these increase the strategic options for firms, they also increase the probability of experiencing adverse events in supply chains that significantly threaten normal business operati
7、ons of firms in the supply chains. Along with the increase in these initiatives, there has been an increase in the potential and magnitude of supply chain risks (Blackhurst et al., 2005). Recent events involving food supply chains (for example, Melamine in infant formula and powdered milk sourced fr
8、om China) underscore risks of extended supply chains. Supply chain disruptions can also adversely affect the financial performance of firms. The study by Hendricks and Singhal (2005) showed how media announcements of supply chain disruptions can affect stock price and shareholder value. Supply chain
9、 risks, their impact and management are receiving much attention among practitioners and academicians alike. The objectives of this special issue are to: (1) highlight supply chain risk management as an important area of investigation in operations and supply chain management; and (2) to present a c
10、ompendium of articles that break new ground in addressing methodological and theoretical issues dealing with supply chain risk management. Supply chain risk management (SCRM) can be viewed as a strategic management activity in firms given that it can affect operational, market and financial performa
11、nce of firms. Organizational efficiency and performance are enhanced when strategy to reduce uncertainty takes into account context and environmental realities (Duncan, 1972). In the case of SRCM, context can be interpreted to refer to sources of risk, magnitude of risk and its relationship to busin
12、ess objectives, and threat of disruption in supply chains. Environmental realities can be interpreted to mean the degree of exposure to adverse events, scope of extended supply chains, supplier management practices, etc. Therefore, the essence of SCRM is to make decisions that optimally align organi
13、zational processes and decisions to exploit opportunities while simultaneously minimizing risk (Miles and Snow, 1978; Venkatraman and Camillus, 1984). Supply chain disruptions can materialize either inside or outside a supply chain. As Wagner and Bode (2008) point out, the financial default of a sup
14、plier and an earthquake that destroys production capacity are situations with completely different attributes and therefore have different effects on the supply chain. This observation points to the need for effective methodology for anticipating, identifying, classifying and assessing risks in supp
15、ly chains. The papers in this issue seek to address these aspects of supply chain risk management. We briefly discuss the four papers in this special issue by way of introduction to the special issue and to motivate the issues examined in each.2 Value focused process engineeringSupply chain risks co
16、ntribute to the overall business risks. An example that illustrates this arises in strategic outsourcing engagements. Firms outsource for a variety of reasonscost reduction, need for strategic agility, innovation and to increase their ability to respond to rapidly changing customer demands. In the c
17、ase of innovation based outsourcing engagement, achieving business objectives requires effective use of integrative supply management practices. These include information integration, knowledge integration and design integration. It is apparent that in these engagements, there is risk of knowledge l
18、eak, since the firms cannot have complete control over knowledge inflows and knowledge outflows. In this situation, while the firm might achieve its innovation objective, it might run the risk of disclosing proprietary knowledge that might reduce its competitiveness in the future or the firm might f
19、ind itself in a lock-in situation with the supplier. These supply management risks must be carefully identified and evaluated vis-a-vis the business objectives. Some of these issues have been considered in the literature (Christopher and Peck, 2004; Narasimhan et al., 2008; Gaudenzi and Borghesi, 20
20、06). The strategic outsourcing context is but one instance where the need to identify and relate risks to supply chain activities is manifested.In the article Supply Chain Risk Identification with Value-Focused Process Engineering, the authors explicate a novel methodology for identifying process-ba
21、sed supply chain risk. The importance of supply chain risk identification methodology has been recognized in the literature. As the authors comment, it is important to have a coherent representation of supply chain structure and use it to express how different risks are related to the various compon
22、ents of the supply chain structure. It is also essential to classify the nature of the risks before embarking on full blown risk assessment and developing risk mitigation strategies. The paper addresses supply chain risk management under the rubric of managing organizational uncertainty.Much of the
23、literature on supply chain risk has dealt with various types of risk and sources of such risk (Norrman and Lindroth, 2004; Speckman and Davis, 2004). They have not taken a multidimensional view of risk that encompasses supply management processes, objectives and risk source. It is recognized in the
24、literature that risk can be studied as a mathematical construct (Cachon, 2004; Tomlin, 2006), conceptual construct (Svensson, 2004; Zsidisin and Smith, 2005) or a combination of the two approaches (Wu and Knott, 2006). As pointed out by the authors, the conceptual view of risk might be very useful i
25、n the risk identification stage.The general approach to risk management should start with the identification of business objectives and performance goals and associated risks. Identifying risk, thus increasing its visibility in the performance evaluation process, leads to risk minimization strategie
26、s that can contribute to performance gains (see for example, Ritchie and Brindley, 2004). In this analysis stage, understanding the hierarchy of business risks is essential.Extant literature has focused on identifying sources of uncertainty and the risks that emanate from them. To do this effectivel
27、y, it is necessary to develop a consistent methodology for risk identification. Several authors have addressed this issue (see, for example, Chopra and Sodhi, 2004; Wu and Knott, 2006). Risk identification is succeeded by quantification of risks that can be used in deriving risk mitigation strategie
28、s (Cachon, 2004; Sodhi, 2005). Another aspect of supply chain risk management is that supply chain risks manifest themselves in the disruption of supply chain flows. These can be disruptions to material flows, information flows, knowledge flows, and control and coordination flows. This perspective o
29、f supply chain risks requires that sources and types of risk be related to the flows that occur within the supply chain. The literature on this aspect of risk identification is not extensive (Juttner, 2005; Paulson, 2004). The Value-Focused Process Engineering (VFPE) methodology seeks to fill this g
30、ap in the literature. VFPE is based on the extended-event-driven Process Chain (e-EPC) representation of business activities and processes (Scheer, 1999). VFPE methodology integrates value-focused thinking (VFT) developed by Keeney (1992) and e-EPC (Scheer, 2000). Nieger, Rotaru and Churilov, in the
31、ir article, define a five-step process for risk identification in supply chains. These are: (1) Activity driven identification of risk objectives; (2) Objective driven identification of risk objectives; (3) Synchronized decomposition; (4) e-EPC taxonomy of risk sources, and (5) combining events stru
32、cture to the objective structure. The authors illustrate these five steps of the VFPE methodology by considering a generic supply chain from Scheer (1999).After explicating the five steps of the VFPE process, the authors identify how the proposed methodology conforms to the properties of supply chai
33、n risk identification process. They argue that the suggested approach conforms to the following properties: objective driven identification and assessment of risk, risks included as part of objective structure, risks linked to supply chain activities, risks linked to individual sources, risks quanti
34、fied, cross-organizational risk visibility enabled and decomposition of risk according to process flow enabled. The key advantage of the proposed methodology is that it integrates conceptual views of risk and decision sciences approach to risk analysis. The validation of the efficacy and usefulness
35、of the proposed methodology can be pursued through action research or participant observation approach.3 Labor management and global supply chain riskThe paper by Jiang, Baker and Frazier examines the issue of labor turnover as a source of supply chain disruption risk in an outsourcing context. It i
36、s an empirical study of labor turnover problems in Chinese suppliers. The authors link labor turnover problems to supply chain risks such as poor quality, low productivity and unfilled orders in supply chains. The paper examines a theoretical issue under the rubric of supply chain risk management. T
37、he Global Supply Chain Forum at The Ohio State University has identified eight processes that form the foundation of supply chain success (Lambert, 2004). Among these, two are directly influenced by labor management issuesorder fulfillment and manufacturing flow management. It is recognized that str
38、ategic outsourcing and off-shoring will continue to grow as firms come under increasing cost and competitive pressures. The need for strategic agility has added to this impetus for outsourcing. In the context of off-shoring, contract manufacturing and low cost country sourcing, understanding labor m
39、anagement issues can be critical for avoiding supply disruptions or under-performing suppliers. It is useful to note that Meredith (2001) has drawn attention to the need for studying human resources issues in operations and supply chain management. Jiang et al. conducted their study in the Pearl Riv
40、er delta region of China. They identify two major elements that contribute worker dissatisfaction and turnover: the sourcing standards of (foreign) buying firm are sometimes too high and the local suppliers greed. As the buying firms strive to meet the demands of their markets and customers, they fe
41、el the need to continually change product specifications, tighten quality standards and decrease lead times for delivery. Approvals for product samples are granted later than desirable from the perspective of the Chinese suppliers. The authors observe that faster production lines and increasing prod
42、uction volumes are typical in manufacturing plants. These lead to unreasonable assignments and extend work hours beyond what is deemed by the workforce to be acceptable. This study is an attempt to identify the root causes of job dissatisfaction leading to turnover and implications for mitigating la
43、bor-related supply chain risks.The paper identifies three major aspects of supply chain risk: cost risk, operational risk and reputation risk. It is useful to note that all three of these risks are impacted by labor management practices in suppliers manufacturing plants. To understand labor turnover
44、 issues, the authors invoke Mobleys model that describes labor turnover process as evolving through ten stages (Mobley, 1977): evaluating the existing job, experiencing job dissatisfaction, considering quitting, evaluating quitting and job search costs, intending to search for alternatives, searchin
45、g for alternatives, evaluating alternatives, comparison with present job, intention to quit and actual quitting. The authors also invoke Lee and Mitchells unfolding model (1994). This theory utilizes the notions of market pull and psychological push. Empirical studies have shown that both these mode
46、ls are useful in understanding employee turnovers. Using the constructs from these theories, the authors carried out an empirical study of Chinese workers. The survey yielded 634 usable responses for a response rate of 21.13%. The data were analyzed using Logit regression analysis with the ratio of
47、probability of quitting to probability of remaining as the dependent variable, and human resources management, production operations management, buyer characteristics, job conditions, compensation and opinions of industry as independent variables. The results of the analysis show that human resource
48、s management practices are statistically significant and therefore, are important in retaining employees and reducing turnover. The analysis also showed that opinions about the buyer were statistically significant.The study by Jiang et al. has two implications for supply chain risk management. First
49、, since human resource management and compensation issues were shown to be important, it is important for buying firms to carefully evaluate and qualify suppliers before entering into supply contracts. It is not clear that extant literature has emphasized these sufficiently. Generally the emphasis has been on process and product related capabilities, and financial strength of suppliers. The results of the study point to an important dimension of supplier qualification in inter
黑公网安备:91230400333293403D