Supply chain management resilience: A theory building approach

Interest in supply chain disruptions and respective negative
consequences has been growing in the last years and the topic is becoming a
main stream. This paper aims to propose a model for supply chain resilience
management. An inductive theory building approach is used; being identified
patterns of management across companies to build a theoretical and testable
supply chain resilience model. To this end, content analysis of archival
information on 77 companies affected by the Japan earthquake 2011 was used
to identify the negative consequences of this event and the patterns of response
practices used by companies to avoid or overcome those negative effects. The
main conclusions of the study are that despite the earthquake provoked several
negative effects, the companies failed to sustain their operations because
capacity shortages and material shortages. These failures characterise the
earthquake negative effects on supply chain.