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Managing Supply Chain Uncertainty in the Post-COVID-19 Business Environment

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A special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050). This special issue belongs to the section "Economic and Business Aspects of Sustainability".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 December 2022) | Viewed by 17004

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Special Issue Editors

Dr. Michael Wang

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Guest Editor

Department of Management, Kingston University, Kingston, UK
Interests: sustainable operations; innovation management; sustainability; supply chain risk management
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Dr. Bill Wang

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Guest Editor

Department of Business Information System, Auckland University of Technology, Auckland 1010, New Zealand
Interests: supply chain integration; sustainable and circular supply chain management
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

COVID-19 pandemic has caused many uncertainties and challenges in business supply chain operations. Besides, many governments have abandoned their ‘Zero-COVID’ strategy. Moreover, new variants of the coronavirus keep appearing, such as the Delta variant and the Omicron variant. For a long time in the future, everyone needs to adapt this ‘new normal’, and organizations must face and continuously deal with these COVID-19 uncertainties and challenges to enable a sustainability post COVID-19. Therefore, we would like to invite scholars to rethink about the ways to manage / mitigate the impacts of COVID-19 pandemic on supply chains in industry 4.0.

Managing supply chain uncertainty may provide valuable insights into supply chain management in the post-COVID-19 business environment. The objective of this Special Issue is to investigate the role of relevant new technologies and / or mitigation strategies in facilitating and managing sustainable supply chain issues in organizations. We welcome both novel conceptual paper and empirical studies addressing sustainability issues in the post-COVID-19 business environment.

In this Special Issue, original research articles and reviews are welcome. Research areas may include (but not limited to) the following:

Managing supply chain uncertainties post COVID-19
The impact of COVID-19 pandemic on supply chain uncertainties
The role of new technologies, such as Blockchain, AI, IoT, etc. to mitigate the impact of COVID-19
Supply Chain Innovation enables a sustainability post COVID-19
Developing supply chain capabilities for mitigating the impacts of COVID-19.
Supply chain strategies / resilience in the ‘new normal’

Reference:

Wang, B., Childerhouse, P., Kang, Y., Huo, B. and Mathrani, S. (2016), "Enablers of supply chain integration: Interpersonal and interorganizational relationship perspectives", Industrial Management & Data Systems, Vol. 116 No. 4, pp. 838-855. https://doi.org/10.1108/IMDS-09-2015-0403

Wang, M., Asian, S., Wood, L.C. and Wang, B. (2020), "Logistics innovation capability and its impacts on the supply chain risks in the Industry 4.0 era", Modern Supply Chain Research and Applications, Vol. 2 No. 2, pp. 83-98. https://doi.org/10.1108/MSCRA-07-2019-0015

Wang, M., Jie, F. and Abareshi, A. (2015), "Evaluating logistics capability for mitigation of supply chain uncertainty and risk in the Australian courier firms", Asia Pacific Journal of Marketing and Logistics, Vol. 27 No. 3, pp. 486-498. https://doi.org/10.1108/APJML-11-2014-0157

Wang M, Wang B, Abareshi A. (2020) Blockchain Technology and Its Role in Enhancing Supply Chain Integration Capability and Reducing Carbon Emission: A Conceptual Framework. Sustainability.; 12(24):10550. https://doi.org/10.3390/su122410550

Wang M, Jie F. (2020) Managing supply chain uncertainty and risk in the pharmaceutical industry. Health Services Management Research.;33(3):156-164. https://doi.org/10.1177/0951484819845305

Wang, M., Wu, Y., & Chen, B., & Evans, M. (2020). Blockchain and Supply Chain Management: A New Paradigm for Supply Chain Integration and Collaboration. Operations and Supply Chain Management: An International Journal, 14(1), 111-122. http://doi.org/10.31387/oscm0440290

Bill Wang, Wen Luo, Abraham Zhang, Zonggui Tian, Z. Li, (2020) Blockchain-enabled circular supply chain management: A system architecture for fast fashion, Computers in Industry, 123. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compind.2020.103324.

We look forward to receiving your contributions.

Dr. Michael Wang
Dr. Bill Wang
Guest Editors

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Keywords

COVID-19
supply chain uncertainty
mitigation
technology
supply chain management

Published Papers (6 papers)

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Research

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22 pages, 1891 KiB

Open AccessArticle

An Insight into the Application of Gradations of Circularity in the Food Packaging Industry: A Systematic Literature Review and a Multiple Case Study

by Umair Tanveer, Shamaila Ishaq and Tifany Oqueli

Sustainability 2023, 15(4), 3007; https://doi.org/10.3390/su15043007 - 7 Feb 2023

Cited by 4 | Viewed by 1864

Abstract

Given its unsustainable growth, the food packaging industry (FPI) has become a priority industry in the circular economy. Given the academic significance attributed to the gradations of circularity in maximising resource efficiency in the food packaging industry, this paper aims to identify the current state of the application of those gradations of circularity in the FPI by finding the least and most commonly used circular strategies in the FPI. Moreover, it aims to identify the drivers of and barriers to the implementation of the gradations of circularity and the levers for overcoming such barriers through SLR using multiple case studies, namely five small-medium enterprises (SMEs) in the FPI that each represent one of the five least implemented circular strategies. The research identified that the efforts of the FPI toward adopting circular strategies were not aligned with the gradations of circularity. Based on the research findings, a lever–barrier matrix is proposed as a toolkit for SMEs planning a transition toward the circular economy or are in the transition phase. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Managing Supply Chain Uncertainty in the Post-COVID-19 Business Environment)

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15 pages, 317 KiB

Open AccessArticle

The Role of Business Environment and Digital Government in Mitigating Supply Chain Vulnerability—Evidence from the COVID-19 Shock

by Huimin Liu, Yupeng Shi, Xuze Yang and Wentao Zhang

Sustainability 2023, 15(3), 2323; https://doi.org/10.3390/su15032323 - 27 Jan 2023

Cited by 3 | Viewed by 1642

Abstract

In recent years, the continuous spread of the COVID-19 epidemic has impacted the supply chain of enterprises. Mitigating the supply chain’s vulnerability has great significance for the survival and development of enterprises. Optimizing the business environment and building a digital government will help improve the external environment for enterprise development. However, its impact on the vulnerability of the enterprise supply chain has yet to be studied. Taking the impact of COVID-19 as an example, this paper uses the survey data of nearly 40,000 enterprises of the National Federation of Industry and Commerce in 2020 and “10,000 private enterprises evaluating the business environment”, to conduct systematic empirical research and fill the research gap in this area. The study indicates that the business environment and digital government can significantly mitigate the impact of COVID-19 on the supply chain. This conclusion is still valid after a series of robustness tests. Mechanism analysis demonstrates that the business environment and digital government can prompt the government to introduce effective mitigation measures promptly, better guarantee production factors and logistics, and thus improve the vulnerability of the enterprise supply chain. This study deepens our understanding of the economic outcome of the business environment and digital government and also sheds new light on supply chain management. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Managing Supply Chain Uncertainty in the Post-COVID-19 Business Environment)

20 pages, 1700 KiB

Open AccessArticle

A Study of the Drivers of Decarbonization in the Plastics Supply Chain in the Post-COVID-19 Era

by Changping Zhao, Juanjuan Sun and Yun Zhang

Sustainability 2022, 14(23), 15858; https://doi.org/10.3390/su142315858 - 28 Nov 2022

Cited by 5 | Viewed by 1886

Abstract

Plastics are an important basic material for national economic development. In the post-COVID-19 stage, green supply chain management has attracted widespread attention. In order to achieve carbon neutrality in the plastics industry, we explored the drivers of supply chain decarbonization in the plastics industry from a microlevel corporate supply chain perspective. Four primary factors and 21 subfactors were identified from the existing literature, and after validation by 12 experts, the causal relationships between the factors were analyzed using the Gray-DEMATEL method. The Gray-DEMATEL method was applied to analyze the causal relationships between the factors. The findings show that joint promotion by stakeholders is the most significant cause driver and market impact is the most prominent driver in the first-level indicator, both of which have a significant impact on low-carbon production. “Process optimization”, “Top-management support”, “Government regulations and support”, and “Information disclosure” are the most significant cause secondary drivers under the corresponding Tier 1 indicator factors, respectively, to provide realistic guidance for companies engaged in the plastics industry to continue to develop a low-carbon circular economy to achieve net-zero emissions under the challenges of COVID-19. Therefore, companies need to focus on the drivers of most importance in this work and understand the interplay between factors. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Managing Supply Chain Uncertainty in the Post-COVID-19 Business Environment)

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19 pages, 1007 KiB

Open AccessArticle

How Does Supply Chain Resilience Affect Supply Chain Performance? The Mediating Effect of Sustainability

by Xinqiu Zhu and Yenchun Jim Wu

Sustainability 2022, 14(21), 14626; https://doi.org/10.3390/su142114626 - 7 Nov 2022

Cited by 13 | Viewed by 5323

Abstract

In recent years, interruption or failure events have occurred due to frequent natural disasters, the outbreak of COVID-19, policy environment turbulence, an increasingly complex business environment, and the increasingly fragile global supply chain. This has reduced the efficiency of supply chains and customer service quality and increased operating costs, creating new requirements for supply chain flexibility and sustainability. When investigating 21 companies based on 200 questionnaires and a structural equation model analysis, the results showed that the elasticity of the supply chain for supply chain sustainability, economic sustainability, social sustainability, and environment sustainability has an obvious positive effect: supply chain sustainability has an obvious positive effect on supply chain performance. Supply chain resilience has no direct positive effect on supply chain performance, but it has a strong indirect effect on supply chain performance under the mediating effect of supply chain sustainability. In view of this, in order to create sustainable supply chain development and improve the performances of supply chains, it is necessary to establish the awareness of risk prevention, root the risk culture in supply chain network organization, and improve supply chain resilience in multiple dimensions. Enterprises in the supply chain should continue to build their resilience and establish effective strategies to integrate supply chains. The intermediary role of sustainability in supply chains and of supply chain flexibility in supply chain performance shows the influence of economically, socially, and environmentally sustainable angles, such as the implementation of supply chain management, the maximization of the interests of the whole supply chain, improving the ability of supply chain enterprises to innovate and develop, establishing customer awareness, and enhancing humanistic ideas. Dynamic selection of supply chain partners while focusing on their green performance promotes the green development of supply chain enterprises. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Managing Supply Chain Uncertainty in the Post-COVID-19 Business Environment)

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20 pages, 6384 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Coordination of Perishable Product Supply Chains with a Joint Contract under Yield and Demand Uncertainty

by Tianwen Chen, Changqing Liu and Xiang Xu

Sustainability 2022, 14(19), 12658; https://doi.org/10.3390/su141912658 - 5 Oct 2022

Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1253

Abstract

With the complex and changeable environment, the demand and yield in the perishable products supply chain are usually uncertain. This paper studies a joint contract that combines revenue sharing with quantity discount to coordinate the supply chain under demand and yield uncertainty, which consists of one manufacturer and one retailer. The retailer pays the manufacturer a down payment at the beginning, and the manufacturer gives the retailer a quantity discount and shares a proportion of profit from the retailer at last. To make sure that both members in the supply chain want to adopt this contract, we prove the feasibility of the joint contract achieving a win–win situation. In addition, we investigate how the price in the secondary market influence the contract, and the conclusion further proves that supply chain coordination is actually a process of re-sharing risks among all nodes of the supply chain. However, the joint contract in this paper has certain adaptability to such risks. Finally, numerical analysis is given to show the impacts of uncertainties on the profit of the supply chain, the decisions made by the members, and the effectiveness of our joint contract. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Managing Supply Chain Uncertainty in the Post-COVID-19 Business Environment)

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Review

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33 pages, 3437 KiB

Open AccessReview

Bibliometric and Text Analytics Approaches to Review COVID-19 Impacts on Supply Chains

by Nishant Saravanan, Jessica Olivares-Aguila and Alejandro Vital-Soto

Sustainability 2022, 14(23), 15943; https://doi.org/10.3390/su142315943 - 29 Nov 2022

Cited by 2 | Viewed by 2848

Abstract

The current COVID-19 pandemic has virtually disrupted supply chains worldwide. Thus, supply chain research has received significant attention. While the impacts have been immeasurable, organizations have realized the need to design strategies to overcome such unexpected events. Therefore, the supply chain research landscape has evolved to address the challenges during the pandemic. However, available literature surveys have not explored the power of text analytics. Hence, in this review, an analysis of the supply chain literature related to the impacts of COVID-19 is performed to identify the current research trends and future research avenues. To discover the frequent topics discussed in the literature, bibliometric analysis (i.e., keyword co-occurrence network) and text mining tools (i.e., N-gram analysis and topic modeling) are employed for the whole corpus and the top-three contributing journals (i.e., Sustainability, International Journal of Logistics Management, Operations Management Research). Moreover, text analytics (i.e., Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency: TF-IDF) is utilized to discover the distinctive topics in the corpus and per journals. A total of 574 papers published up to the first semester of 2022 were collected from the Scopus database to determine the research trends and opportunities. The keyword network identified four clusters considering the implementation of digitalization to achieve resilience and sustainability, the usage of additive manufacturing during the pandemic, the study of food supply chains, and the development of supply chain decision models to tackle the pandemic. Moreover, the segmented keyword network analysis and topic modeling were performed for the top three contributors. Although both analyses draw the research concentrations per journal, the keyword network tends to provide a more general scope, while the topic modeling gives more specific topics. Furthermore, TF-IDF scores unveiled topics rarely studied, such as the implications of the pandemic on plasma supply chains, cattle supply chains, and reshoring decisions, to mention a few. Additionally, it was observed how the different methodologies implemented allowed to complement the information provided by each method. Based on the findings, future research avenues are discussed. Therefore, this research will help supply chain practitioners and researchers to identify supply chain advancements, gaps in the literature and future research streams. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Managing Supply Chain Uncertainty in the Post-COVID-19 Business Environment)

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