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To be able to continuously provide affordable services to consumers, managers of critical infrastructure (CI) maintenance supply networks have to balance investments in resilience with costs. At the same time, CI providers need to consider factors that influence resilience such as the geographical spread or the location of the network. This study aims to contextualize supply chain resilience knowledge by exploring how maintenance resource configurations impact resilience and costs in CI supply networks.

An in-depth longitudinal single case study of a representative CI provider that has centralized its maintenance supply network is used. Data were collected before and after the change to evaluate the effect of the changes on the maintenance supply network.

This study shows that in this specific CI maintenance context, structural resource choices such as the quantity or location of spare parts and tools, the creation and exploitation of tacit knowledge and staff motivation impact both resilience and costs due to geographical spread, network location and other network properties.

This study extends general supply chain resilience knowledge to a new setting (i.e. CI) and shows how existing insights apply in this context. More specifically, it is shown that even in engineered supply networks there is a need to consider the effect of human agency on resilience as the creation and exploitation of tacit knowledge are of immense importance in managing the network. In addition, the relationship between normal accidents theory and high reliability theory (HRT) is revisited as findings indicate that HRT is also important after a disruption has taken place.

Organisations must build resilience to be able to deal with disruptions or non-routine events in their supply chains. While learning is implicit in definitions of supply chain resilience (SCRes), there is little understanding of how exactly organisations can adapt their routines to build resilience. The purpose of this study is to address this gap.

This paper is an in-depth qualitative case study based on 28 interviews across five companies, exploring learning to build SCRes.

This study uncovers six learning mechanisms and their antecedents that foster SCRes. The learning mechanisms identified suggest that through knowledge creation within an organisation and knowledge transfer across the supply chain and broader network of stakeholders, operating routines are built and/or adapted both intentionally and unintentionally during three stages of a supply chain disruption: preparation, response and recovery.

This study shows how the impact of a supply chain disruption may be reduced by intentional and unintentional learning in all three disruption phases. By being aware of the antecedents of unintentional learning, organisations can more consciously adapt routines. Furthermore, findings highlight the potential value of additional attention to knowledge transfer, particularly in relation to collaborative and vicarious learning across the supply chain and broader network of stakeholders not only in preparation for, but also in response to and recovery from disruptions.

This study contributes novel insights about how learning leads both directly and indirectly to the evolution of operating routines that help an organisation and its supply chains to deal with disruptions. Results detail six specific learning mechanisms for knowledge creation and knowledge transfer and their antecedents for building SCRes. In doing so, this study provides new fine-grained theoretical insights about how SCRes can be improved through all three phases of a disruption. Propositions are developed for theory development.

Drawing on a novel approach to active learning in supply chain management, the purpose of this paper is to describe and analyze how the students’ learning process as well as their learning outcomes are influenced by the learning and teaching contexts.

A case study of a master’s level purchasing course carried out at two universities in which students work in projects resulting in jointly authored books.

The findings show how the teaching context influenced the learning process and the learning outcomes. Active involvement, self-directed learning, collaborative learning and learning from practice enabled by the set-up of the course are identified as key mechanisms for the learning outcomes in relation to skills and content.

Increasingly, supply chain management graduates have to develop professional, practical, research as well as metacognitive and life-long learning skills during their university education. This paper identifies mechanisms and illustrates how educators can use the set-up of a course to enable students to engage in a learning process resulting in a variety of skills as well as specific content-based aspects of knowledge.

While systems theory explicitly considers interactions as part of a system’s complexity, supply chain complexity (SCC) is mostly conceptualized and measured as a linear summation of several aspects. The purpose of this paper is to challenge the general understanding by explicitly investigating interactions between and across different types (detail and dynamic) and levels (plant, supply chain, environment) of SCC.

An exploratory multiple case study methodology is adopted drawing on in-depth semi-structured interviews with respondents from eight manufacturing plants in the food processing industry.

On the one hand, it is found that different types add and increase overall SCC. On the other hand, the study also shows the opposite: interactions between detail and dynamic complexity can reduce the overall SCC experienced. Additionally, the findings highlight the specific food processing characteristics such as the variability of quality and quantity of raw materials that underlie interactions between types and levels of SCC.

This study adds to theory by empirically showing that interactions across and between types and levels do not automatically increase, but might also reduce SCC. As such, the findings contribute new detail to the concept of SCC: aspects of complexity do not necessarily add up linearly. Additionally, this study is one of the first to demonstrate how specific contextual aspects from the food processing industry relate to SCC.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate purchasing practices in service triads by exploring the link between ex ante contracting and ex post contract management and how these practices influence the satisfaction of buyers and suppliers (in concessionary arrangements) with their relationship in terms of meeting the needs of the buyer’s customers.

An in-depth exploratory multiple case study was carried out in a shop-in-shop context. Multi-method and multi-source data collection included interviews, documents and the contracts between buyer and supplier, providing evidence of the formal and relational structures in both the contracting and contract management stages.

The case findings provide evidence that behavioural standards established in a social contract are important prerequisites for the establishment and subsequent management of a formal contract. Second, this study shows that, when outsourcing core services in a service triad, a combination of performance-oriented and behavioural-oriented contract terms, covering a mix of topics related to both the customer-experience and to buyer-supplier-oriented aspects, contribute to aligning the buyer’s, suppliers’ and customers’ interests. The main findings are presented in a causal model and formulated as propositions.

This paper is one of the first studies to explore how core services are outsourced in a service triad. It provides evidence that the social contract between buyer and supplier influences the establishment of the formal contract as well as contract management, and a mix of contract topics, some related to the customers’ experience and others purely buyer-supplier oriented, contribute to the alignment of buyer’s, suppliers’ and customers’ interests.

Risks can easily disrupt the demand–supply match targeted by sales and operations planning (S&OP). As surprisingly little is known of how organizations identify, assess, treat and monitor risks through tactical planning processes, this paper zooms in on the S&OP set-up and process parameters to explore how risks are managed through S&OP.

A multiple case study analyzes the S&OP processes of seven organizations in the process industry, drawing on 17 in-depth interviews with high-ranking representatives, internal and external documents, and a group meeting with participating organizations.

The study finds that organizations proactively design their S&OP based on their main risk focus stemming from the planning environment. In turn, such designs proactively support organizations' risk identification, assessment, treatment and monitoring through their S&OP execution. Reactively, a crisis S&OP meeting – making use of the structure of S&OP – can be used as a risk-treatment tool, and S&OP design can be temporarily adapted to deal with emerging risks.

This study is among the first to empirically elucidate risk management through S&OP. S&OP design, execution and adaption are identified as three interconnected strategies that allow organizations to manage risks. The design enables risk management activities in the monthly execution of S&OP. The reactive role of S&OP in risk management is particularly novel.

The purpose of this paper is to explore factors influencing the effectiveness of buyer initiated behavioral-based governance methods (BBGMs). The ability of BBGMs to improve supplier performance is assessed considering power imbalances and the resource intensiveness of the BBGM. Agency Theory is used as an interpretive lens.

An explorative multiple case study approach is used to collect qualitative and quantitative data from buying companies involved in 13 BBGMs.

Drawing on Agency Theory several factors are identified which can explain BBGM effectiveness considering power differences and the resource intensiveness of the BBGM. The data show that even high resource intensive BBGMs can be implemented effectively if there are benefits for a powerful supplier. Cultural influences and uncertainty of the business environment also play a role.

This study develops a series of propositions indicating that Agency Theory can provide valuable guidance on how to better understand the effectiveness of BBGMs. Underlying mechanisms are identified that explain how power imbalance does not necessarily make improvement initiatives unsuccessful.

This paper aims to explore how collaboration influences supply chain resilience. Collaborative activities and their underlying mechanisms in relation to visibility, velocity and flexibility are investigated.

An exploratory case study consisting of eight buyer–supplier relationships in the food processing industry was conducted.

Key findings show how specific collaborative activities (information-sharing, collaborative communication, mutually created knowledge and joint relationship efforts) increase supply chain resilience via increased visibility, velocity and flexibility. Underlying mechanisms and interdependencies of these factors within the supply chain network are identified.

This is one of the first papers to provide in-depth insights into collaboration as a formative element of resilience in a supply chain setting. A series of propositions explain the specific influence of collaborative activities on supply chain resilience beyond a single company perspective.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the concept of agility in the context of supply chains of humanitarian aid (HA) organizations, particularly non‐government organizations (NGOs). This responds to the increasing pressure on NGOs to use their resources more strategically if they are to gain donor trust and long‐term commitment.

A literature‐based approach that extends the commercial supply chain concept of agility to NGOs is combined with the first exploratory semi‐structured interviews of these concepts with five NGO supply chain directors.

The commercial concept of agility when responding to disaster relief holds strong potential for increasing efficiency and effectiveness, but this application is restrained by the absence of supporting information technology (IT) and the relegation of supply chain management (SCM) to the “back office” by NGOs. This has potential implications for NGOs and other HA agencies.

This paper represents an exploratory study, and an extended pool of interviewees would reinforce the qualitative findings. Planned future research will address this issue.

Practical guidance on how NGOs can proactively manage their organization's ability to respond with agility in a highly pressured environment is provided.

This paper is the first to offer practical guidance to managers of NGOs on strategies available to improve their organization's flexibility and agility, based on theoretical concepts and initial exploratory data. In addition, evidence of how commercial tools apply in a different arena may prompt commercial managers to be more innovative in utilizing and customizing supply chain principles to their particular context of operation.