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Supply chains must rebuild for resilience to respond to challenges posed by systemwide disruptions. Unlike past disruptions that were narrow in impact and short-term in duration, the Covid pandemic presented a systemic disruption and revealed shortcomings in responses. This study outlines an approach to rebuilding supply chains for resilience, integrating innovation in areas critical to supply chain management.

The study is based on extensive debates among the authors and their peers. The authors focus on three areas deemed fundamental to supply chain resilience: (1) forecasting, the starting point of supply chain planning, (2) the practices of supply chain risk management and (3) product design, the starting point of supply chain design. The authors’ debated and pooled their viewpoints to outline key changes to these areas in response to systemwide disruptions, supported by a narrative literature review of the evolving research, to identify research opportunities.

All three areas have evolved in response to the changed perspective on supply chain risk instigated by the pandemic and resulting in systemwide disruptions. Forecasting, or prediction generally, is evolving from statistical and time-series methods to human-augmented forecasting supplemented with visual analytics. Risk management has transitioned from enterprise to supply chain risk management to tackling systemic risk. Finally, product design principles have evolved from design-for-manufacturability to design-for-adaptability. All three approaches must work together.

The authors outline the evolution in research directions for forecasting, risk management and product design and present innovative research opportunities for building supply chain resilience against systemwide disruptions.

This study aims to answer the question: What dynamic capabilities do diverse humanitarian organizations have?

We examine this question through the lens of dynamic capabilities with sensing, seizing and reconfiguring capacities. The research team interviewed 15 individuals from 12 humanitarian organizations that had (a) different geographic scopes (global versus local) and (b) different missions (emergency response versus long-term development aid). We also gathered data from secondary sources, including standard operating procedures, company websites, and news databases (Factiva, Reuters and Bloomberg).

The findings identify the operational and dynamic capabilities of global and local humanitarian organizations while distinguishing between their mission to provide long-term development aid or emergency relief. (1) The global organizations, with their beneficiary responsiveness, reconfigured their sensing and seizing capacities throughout the COVID-19 pandemic by pivoting quickly to local procurement or regional supply chains. The long-term development organizations pivoted to multi-year supplier agreements with fixed pricing to counter price uncertainty and accessed social capital with government bodies. In contrast, emergency response organizations developed end-to-end supply chain visibility to sense changes in supply and demand. (2) Local humanitarian organizations developed the capacity to sense demand and supply changes to reconfigure based on their experiential learning working with the local community. The long-term-development local organizations used un-owned and scalable relief infrastructure to seize opportunities to rebuild affected areas. In contrast, emergency response organizations developed their capacity to seize opportunities to provide aid stemming from their decentralized decision-making, a lack of structured procedures, and the authority for increased expenditure.

We propose a theoretical framework to identify humanitarian organizations' operational and dynamic capabilities, distinguishing between global and local organizations and their emergency response and long-term aid missions.

This paper aims to study the motives that led to conflict between two groups – Employees of state-owned power distribution companies and the Government – over permitting parallel licensing to a private company for power distribution services in selected areas of the Maharashtra state in India. The study also seeks to comprehend the reconciliation process and the role of leadership in thwarting the strike that could have impacted common citizens.

The research is built on a case-based approach to analyze the pre- and poststrike environment along with the impact of the power shortage during the few hours of the strike. A semi-structured interview method wherein government and employee union representatives were interviewed to understand their version of the incident is used. Related literature, reports and news were reviewed to realize the impacts and consequences of similar situations in the past.

The strike was called off within a few hours with the intervention of state government to resolve the issue, promising the union the government’s intention not to privatize but to invest INR 500bn in the three government companies. The parallel licensing may impact government-owned power distribution companies as well as customers in the future.

It will pave the way for lessons related to such incidence where the Government and the Unions are at loggerheads over issues like privatization or ownership of the company and help the involved and other parties to seek a viable solution. The role of resilient leadership demonstrated by both parties led to a win-win solution within a few hours of the strike.

The paper is a case study on an issue that is very contemporary; the role of leadership and its swiftness in decision-making that led to a solution to a very complex situation is something that was not done earlier in the context of the State vs Union issue.