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This paper aims to look at corporate vulnerability – a concept unexplored in literature. It analyzes how firms develop vulnerability as a result of past strategic decisions and business practices like global sourcing, outsourcing, business models, manufacturing practices, diversification, etc.

This paper relies on cross-disciplinary theories from natural hazard management and strategy literature to put forth a definition of strategic vulnerability and its dimensions.

Strategic vulnerability is seen as a multidimensional construct having at least three attributes: Tangible resources that capture the physical assets dimension; Capabilities are the skills, learning and knowledge part; and Fitness that represents the collective ability of an organization to cope with external and internal challenges. Further, vulnerabilities remain inherent in the firm, and may not be visible until organizations face some external stress or adverse scenario.

The framework needs further empirical testing through case studies or other methodologies to bring forth managerial reflections on the three dimensions identified in the paper.

Strategic vulnerability framework helps managers to analyze the dimensions that make strategic position of firms vulnerable to existing or emerging competition. Based on the vulnerability analysis, managers can initiate actions to improve competitive positioning of their firms.

This paper aims to highlight the importance and role of strategic cyber intelligence to support risk-informed decision-making, ultimately leading to improved objectives, policies, architectures and investments to advance a nation or organization’s interests in the cyber domain.

Integration of professional research literature from the fields of intelligence studies, strategy and information/computer security.

Investing in technology, firewalls and intrusion detection systems is appropriate but, by itself, insufficient. Intelligence is a key component. Cyber intelligence emphasizes prevention and anticipation, to focus cybersecurity efforts before an attack occurs (“left of the hack”). Strategic cyber intelligence can substantially reduce risk to the organization’s mission and valued assets and support its due diligence.

This paper describes how strategic cyber intelligence can be implemented and used within an enterprise to enhance its cyber defense, and create a more proactive and adaptive security posture. It not only describes strategic cyber intelligence as a distinct discipline, but also demonstrates how the key intelligence functions articulate with existing cybersecurity risk management standards.

The dynamics and effects of interconnected risks among construction organisations tend to be overlooked across the Malaysian public project supply chains, making them highly vulnerable to supply chain disruptions. This study aims to investigate this dynamism by assessing the supply chain’s critical vulnerabilities and capabilities that formulate the level of resilience in handling disruptive events in construction projects.

A comprehensive questionnaire survey was conducted with 105 construction professionals from two groups of respondents, the public and private organisations that work in public projects to identify their current vulnerabilities and capabilities. Data were analysed and compared using the Mann–Whitney U and Kruskal–Wallis tests.

The findings revealed that the top five critical vulnerability factors of the supply chain include political or regulatory changes, market pressures, management, financial and strategic vulnerability. Further comparisons highlighted that the public organisations faced significantly higher political threats compared to the private organisations whilst the private organisations faced significant market pressures. The survey also shows that despite the private organisations’ high capability in financial strength, the public organisations’ financial vulnerability has destabilised the entire supply chain.

This study presents the construction supply chain’s vulnerabilities in a layered framework approach that can provide managers a new perspective on the dynamics of the cascading impacts of these vulnerabilities when observed through several layers of supply chains.

This study aims to unveil the impact of strategic renewal and its implications on employment during the COVID-19 pandemic. It explores the role of strategic renewal in mitigating the adverse effects of crises, fostering organizational adaptation and restructuring capabilities. Additionally, it examines the moderating effect of familiness on understanding the strategic renewal process and its importance to family firms during times of crisis.

The study utilizes data from the STEP Project Global Consortium, which collected information from 3,026 family firms operating in 75 countries and various sectors during the pandemic. Structural Equation Modeling was employed to test the authors' research hypotheses.

The authors' results reveal that strategic renewal significantly impacted employment growth during the COVID-19 pandemic of family firms. Strategic renewal plays a crucial role in mitigating the negative effects of that crisis on employment by helping firms adapt and restructure their capabilities. The study also found that synergies among family members positively influenced innovation in organizational resilience and enhanced the positive effects of strategic renewal on employment growth.

This study contributes to the literature by emphasizing the importance of strategic renewal of family businesses during the COVID-19 pandemic. It offers insights into mitigating vulnerability risks amidst crises and adds to the understanding of the strategic renewal process and its implications for the organizations. The findings hold theoretical implications for the field of strategic management and provide valuable insights into the unique challenges and opportunities faced by family firms in uncertain environments.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/IJSE-11-2022-0771

The purpose of this paper is twofold: to identify the supply chain risks in the automotive and electronic industries in Brazil, and to highlight the urgency of supply chain risk management (SCRM) implementation.

It uses exploratory study methodology in the automotive and electronic industries, taking in consideration of the (SCRM) phase of initiation.

There are significant practices to implement SCRM: better supply chain communication, SCRM and business continuity planning training program, and the creation of a chief risk officer position to manage the supply chain risks.

The limitation of this study comes from its small sample size. There are two simple reasons: many companies did not know SCRM and thus misinterpreted the information about SCRM.

This case study promotes more preparedness for the two industries to manage the risks of supply chain.

This study shows the risks that surround the supply chain in the automotive and electronic industries in Brazil and how these industries can implement SCRM in a successful way.

The concept of switching costs or transaction‐specific investments has been widely used in theoretical models of industrial buyer‐seller relationships. Yet there are few empirical studies that have examined the dimensionality of switching costs. The purpose of this study is to investigate empirically the dimensions of switching costs. Different typologies, or dimensions, of switching costs are identified from a review of the literature. Measures of these dimensions are developed and empirically tested for construct and pragmatic validity using confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modelling. Two switching cost dimensions are identified and validated: hard assets and soft assets.

Considering lean thinking inside and beyond the organisation's boundaries, in the extended supply chain, this paper aims to fill a literature gap clearly stating some outsourcing practices as lean practices and establishing a deployment evolution parallel between both practices.

A literature review was carried out collecting cases of lean deployment in healthcare, from both scientific and grey literature. Cases were classified according to lean deployment taxonomy in healthcare settings, showing some differences in lean journey stages in 15 countries.

There is an alignment between SCM thinking in healthcare and lean thinking that places a SCM decision as outsourcing as a lean practice serving not only strategic intent but solving operational efficiency. There is a match between different outsourcing drivers (transactional, strategic and transformational) and lean maturity levels. The main constraint to deployment of both lean and outsourcing practices are cultural differences.

Understanding lean and outsourcing different deployment maturity levels under the national cultural umbrella can open new perspectives to study lean sustainability factors and better outsourcing relationships in healthcare organisations.

This paper presents a merger between the state‐of‐the art of both lean and outsourcing practices in healthcare settings and suggests an outsourcing and lean evolving pathway.

Reverse logistics (RL), an inseparable aspect of supply chain management, returns used products to recovery processes with the aim of reducing waste generation. Enterprises, however, seem reluctant to apply RL due to various types of risks which are perceived as posing an economic threat to businesses. This paper draws on a synthesis of supply chain and risk management literature to identify and cluster RL risk factors and to recommend risk mitigation strategies for reducing the negative impact of risks on RL implementation.

The authors identify and cluster risk factors in RL by using risk management theory. Experts in RL and supply chain risk management validated the risk factors via a questionnaire. An unsupervised data mining method, self-organising map, is utilised to cluster RL risk factors into homogeneous categories.

A total of 41 risk factors in the context of RL were identified and clustered into three different groups: strategic, tactical and operational. Risk mitigation strategies are recommended to mitigate the RL risk factors by drawing on supply chain risk management approaches.

This paper studies risks in RL and recommends risk management strategies to control and mitigate risk factors to implement RL successfully.

This study aims to investigate the impact of economic vulnerability upon entrepreneurial competencies (i.e. commitment competency, conceptual competency, opportunity recognition competency, organizing competency, relationship competency and strategic competency) among respondents from varied development initiatives established by the eKasih program (National Poverty Data Bank) in Peninsular Malaysia.

Upon adopting the cross-sectional design, data were randomly gathered from selected 300 micro-entrepreneurs from the list of development organizations available in the eKasih (National Poverty Data Bank), located at four states in Peninsular Malaysia. The quantitative data were gathered by performing structured interview sessions from September until November 2017.

The outcomes of the study displayed that economic vulnerability has a significantly negative effect upon commitment, opportunity recognition, organizing and strategic competency. On the other hand, the results showcased that economi c vulnerability has a significantly positive effect on competency, but insignificantly positive impact upon conceptual competency.

These study outcomes appear to extend the scope of the resource-based view, apart from enriching the existing entrepreneurial competency literature, particularly within the Malaysian context. Hence, it is recommended that the government of Malaysia and development organizations should focus on maximizing the level of competency among micro-entrepreneurs as a viable approach to decrease the effect of economic vulnerability.

COVID-19 has affected most business activities, including technology-based business. The higher the business vulnerability rating, the greater the impacts. After identifying three dimensions of vulnerability (exposure, business sensitivity and response capacity), this study aims to determine the potential components and indicators of the vulnerability of technology-based businesses.

Using the indicator approach, a comprehensive vulnerability model was developed for assessing the vulnerability of the technology-based business against COVID-19.

In this study, COVID-19, as a biological threat and an exogenous shock, was considered the exposure dimension. Business characteristics, job characteristics, business owner-manager demographics, product and supplier characteristics were identified as the sensitivity dimension, while resources, human capital, technological capitals, social capitals, institutional capitals, infrastructures, management capacity and supply chain capabilities were defined as the adaptive business capability or response capacity. To determine vulnerability and response capacity against exogenous shocks and a pandemic crisis, the framework can act as a useful checklist for managers and owners of technology-based businesses.

Research on the COVID-19, especially in the technology-based business, is still at the emergent stage. This study is a pioneering effort to review the literature on business vulnerability and provide a framework to reduce business vulnerability using the indicator-based approach.