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This study investigates the impact of geopolitical disruptions on the manufacturing supply chain (SC) location decision of managers in UK multinational firms. The context of study is the UK manufacturing sector and its response to the UK's decision to leave the European Union (EU), or Brexit.

The study adopts an abductive, theory elaboration approach and expands on Dunning's eclectic paradigm of international production. A Delphi study over four iterative rounds is conducted to gather and assess insights into manufacturing SC location issues related to Brexit. The panel consisted of 30 experts and managers from a range of key industries, consultancies, governmental organisations, and academia. The Delphi findings are triangulated using a focus group with 38 participants.

The findings indicate that the majority of companies planned or have relocated production facilities from the UK to the EU, and distribution centres (DCs) from the EU to the UK. This was because of market-seeking advantages (being close to major centres of demand, ease of access to local and international markets) and efficiency-seeking advantages (costs related to expected delays at ports, tariff and non-tariff barriers). Ownership and internalisation advantages, also suggested by the eclectic paradigm, did not play a role in the location decision.

The study elaborates on the OLI framework by showing that policy-related uncertainty is a primary influencing factor in the manufacturing location decision, outweighing the importance of uncertainty as an influencer of governance mode choices. The authors find that during geopolitical disruptions managers make location decisions in tight time-frames with incomplete and imperfect information, in situations of high perceived uncertainty. The study elaborates on the eclectic paradigm by explaining how managerial cognition and bounded rationality influence the manufacturing location decision-making process.

Why do managers redesign global supply chains in a particular manner when faced with compounding geopolitical disruptions? In answering this research question, this study identifies a constrained system of reasoning (decision-making logic) employed by managers when they redesign their supply chains in situations of heightened uncertainty.

The authors conducted 40 elite interviews with senior supply chain executives in 28 companies across nine industries from November 2019 to June 2020, when the UK was preparing to leave the European Union, the US–China trade war was escalating, and Covid-19 was spreading rapidly around the globe.

When redesigning global supply chains, the authors find that managerial decision-making logic is constrained by three distinct environmental ecosystem conditions: (1) the perceived intensity of institutional pressures; (2) the relative mobility of suppliers and supply chain assets; and (3) the perceived severity of the potential disruption risk. Intense government pressure and persistent geopolitical risk tend to impact firms in the same industry, resulting in similar approaches to decision-making regarding supply chain design. However, where suppliers are relatively immobile and supply chain assets are relatively fixed, a dominant logic is consistently present.

Building on an institutional logics perspective, this study finds that managerial decision-making under heightened uncertainty is not solely guided by institutional pressures but also by perceptions of the severity of risk related to potential supply chain disruption and the immobility of supply chain assets. These findings support the theoretical development of a novel construct that the authors term ‘supply chain logics’. Finally, this study provides a decision-making framework for Senior Executives competing in an increasingly complex and unstable business environment.

This paper examines how firms of different sizes formulate and implement strategies to achieve fit with an external environment disrupted by a geopolitical event. The context of the study is the pharmaceutical industry and how it managed the supply chain uncertainty created by the United Kingdom's decision to leave the European Union, or Brexit.

Data were collected longitudinally from the pro-Brexit vote on 23 June 2016, until the UK’s departure from the EU on 31 January 2020. Twenty-seven interviews were conducted in the pharmaceutical sector, including nineteen interviews with senior managers at eight case companies and eight interviews with experts working for trade associations and standards institutes. The interview findings were triangulated with Brexit policy and strategy documentation.

When formulating strategy, multi-national enterprises (MNEs) used worst case assumptions, while large firms, and small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) gathered knowledge as part of a “wait-and-see” strategy, allowing them to reduce perceptions of heightened supply chain uncertainty. Firms then implemented reactive and/or proactive strategies to mitigate supply chain risks.

The study elaborates on strategic contingency theory by identifying two important conditions for achieving strategic fit: first, companies deploy intangible resources, such as management time, to gather information and reduce perceptions of heightened supply chain uncertainty. Second, companies deploy tangible resources (supply chain redundancies, new supply chain assets) to lessen the negative outcomes of supply chain risks. Managers are provided with an empirical framework for mitigating supply chain uncertainty and risk originating from geopolitical disruptions.

The purpose of this article is to discuss the theme of managing operations and supply chains in the so-called “new normal”. It reflects the themes emerging from recent research and how these might be conceptualized.

The article reviews research presented at the EurOMA 2021 conference and eight papers subsequently developed into full journal papers. It considers conceptual themes contained in these papers and how they reflect recent turbulent events in the external business environment.

The article notes the themes of resilience in relation to the Covid-19 pandemic, environmental sustainability, especially climate change and the Sustainable Development Goals, and the significance of digital technologies. Additional themes relating to inter-organizational relationships, complexity and manager cognition are also considered. In order to provide useful insights for future disruptions, general concepts on epistemology and responsiveness are described.

The article discusses general principles across cutting-edge research in operations and supply chain management, to support improved performance to add economic and social value.

This paper positions market sensing, supply chain agility and supply chain adaptability as a coherent cluster of dynamic supply chain capabilities. The purpose of this paper is to understand how dynamic supply chain capabilities interrelate and their effect on supply chain ambidexterity.

Based on a survey of Pakistani manufacturing firms, a theoretically-derived model was tested in a structural equation model.

The results of the study show that a market-sensing capability is an antecedent of supply chain agility and supply chain adaptability. Furthermore, supply chain agility, directly, and supply chain adaptability, indirectly, affect supply chain ambidexterity. Supply chain agility, therefore, mediates the relationship between supply chain adaptability and supply chain ambidexterity.

The contribution of this study lies in: first, identifying dynamic capability clusters relevant for achieving supply chain ambidexterity; second, evaluating performance implications of dynamic capabilities in the supply chain, specifically supply chain agility and adaptability; and third, proposing a unique measurement of supply chain ambidexterity in the light supply chain theory, and empirically evaluating the relationship between dynamic capabilities and supply chain ambidexterity.

The purpose of this paper is to determine the antecedents of dynamic supply chain capabilities (DSCCs). The authors test entrepreneurial orientation (EO) and supply chain learning orientation (SCLO) as two antecedents of DSCCs.

The paper uses structural equation modelling to test a hypothetical model. Data are gathered from a survey of 275 operations managers in Pakistan’s turbulent manufacturing industry.

The findings suggest that the weaker direct effects of EO, in comparison to the indirect effects, indicate that an SCLO mediates the relationship between EO and DSCCs.

It is widely accepted that firms do not compete with each other, instead, it is end-to-end supply chains that fight for market dominance. Many scholars use the dynamic capabilities view to understand supply chain level competition. However, the dynamic capabilities view is firm-centric in its examination of how companies transform internal resources to compete in the external environment. The theoretical contribution of this paper is a roadmap of how to build dynamic, supply-chain level and capabilities by determining the key antecedents. This paper explains that DSCCs emerge when buyers and suppliers share strategic orientations. Firms with an EO and the ability to learn with supply chain partners are well-positioned to develop DSCCs. This provides a new angle to theory testing by indicating that dynamic capabilities are enabled by an EO and an ability to learn with supply chain partners.

Managers are given the building blocks of DSCCs, starting with fostering an entrepreneurially-oriented mindset in the company and then learning with supply chain partners. Entrepreneurially-oriented managers are encouraged to take risks and co-develop innovative ideas with suppliers during the supply chain learning process.

This study is one of the earliest efforts to determine the strategic orientations that antecede the emergence of DSCCs.

Outlines the variety of interests of William Roscoe, a successful (until 1816) banker in Liverpool, from botany to poetry, and concentrates on his book collecting. Describes the contents of the library he established at Allerton Hall, Liverpool, and their influence on his own studies and writings. His contributions to the intellectual and civic development of Liverpool prior to its rapid commercial expansion in the nineteenth century are described and the fate of his art and book collections, and the extent of their survival in Liverpool itself, despite the dispersal of most of his library, following his bankruptcy in 1816 are indicated. The nature and extent of his legacy, especially in Liverpool itself, is discussed.

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