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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.

The purpose of this study is to empirically investigate the impact of institutional pressures, institutional logics and institutional complexity on Sustainable Supply Chain Management (SSCM) practices across mixed public and private sector supply chains.

Multi-case study data were collected from three tiers of food and catering supply chains: the customer/consumer tier; focal public sector UK Universities; and private sector suppliers/contractors.

The findings indicate that: normative and mimetic pressures are more prevalent in focal Universities, compared to suppliers; there is typically no single dominant logic across these supply chains; and the multiplicity of institutional logics (e.g. sustainability logic versus financial logic) increases institutional complexity. Therefore, in the typical case of homogeneity in terms of institutional pressures and logics, e.g. with a dominant sustainability logic throughout the supply chain, radical change in SSCM practices is facilitated. In contrast, in the more typical case when there is heterogeneity, with competing logics at different supply chain tiers, this limits SSCM to more incremental changes in practices.

This study is limited to three tiers of the food and catering supply chains of UK Universities.

To aid in the successful implementation of SSCM, this study suggests a need for managers to develop an initial understanding of the prevailing institutional logics and pressures at different tiers of the supply chain.

A number of the SSCM practices studied address social sustainability.

No previous studies have empirically investigated the impact of institutional complexity in the context of SSCM practices across supply chains, involving both mixed public and private sector organisations.

Forced labour is one of the most exploitative practices in supply chains, generating serious human right abuses. The authors seek to understand how relationships for reducing forced labour are influenced by institutional logics. The emerging supply chain efforts of social enterprises offer particularly intriguing approaches, as their social mission can spur creative new approaches and reshape widely adopted management practices.

The authors study supplier relationships in the smartphone industry and compare the evolving practices of two cases: the first, a growing novel social enterprise; and the second, a high-profile commercial firm that has adopted a progressive role in combating forced labour.

The underlying institutional logic influenced each firm's willingness to act beyond its direct suppliers and to collaborate in flexible ways that create systematic change. Moreover, while both focal firms had clear, well-documented procedures related to forced labour, the integration, rather than decoupling, of forced labour and general supply chain policies provided a more effective way to reduce the risks of forced labour in social enterprises.

As authors’ comparative case study approach may lack generalizability, future research is needed to broadly test their propositions.

The paper identifies preconditions in terms of institutional logics to successfully reduce the risk of forced labour in supply chains.

This paper discusses how social enterprises can provide a learning laboratory that enables commercial firms to identify options for supplier relationship improvement.

Neo-institutional theories and their constructs have so far only received limited attention in supply chain management literature. As recent supply chain disruptions and their ripple effects affect actors on a broader institutional level, supply chains are confronted with multiple new and emerging, often conflicting, institutional demands. This study aims to unpack the notion of institutional complexity behind supply chain disruptions and present a novel institutional framework to lower supply chain susceptibility and increase supply chain resilience.

The authors identify the patterns of complexity that shape the supply chain susceptibility, namely, distance, diversity and ambiguity, and present three institutional responses to susceptibility to increase supply chain resilience, namely, institutional entrepreneurship, institutional alignment and institutional layering.

This paper analyses the current situational relevance to better understand the various and patterned ways how logics influence both supply chain susceptibility and the supply chain resilience. The authors derive six propositions on how complexity can be reduced for supply chain susceptibility and can be increased for supply chain resilience.

By expanding and extending research on institutional complexity to supply chains, the authors broaden how researchers in supply chain management view supply chain susceptibility, thereby providing managers with theory to think differently about supply chains and its resilience.

The purpose of this paper is to describe the conversion of knowledge into value by examining the confluence of service-dominant logic (S-D logic), supply chain management (SCM), human resource management (HRM), and neuroeconomics. S-D logic suggests that knowledge is the raw material of value creation. SCM provides an organized foundation to study the conversion of raw materials into value. HRM recognizes the centrality of human decisions in the process of converting knowledge into value. Neuroscience gives insight into the efficiency and effectiveness of the human decisions processes. Global SCM provides more than markets and raw materials – global SCM provides the human resources central to value creation.

This paper combines literature review with interviews from members of supply chain teams engaged in performance-based logistics (PBL) to develop a model of the S-D logic knowledge conversion process.

The model describes individual-based decision constructs managers can expect to face as they convert knowledge, from a global supply chain team, into value. The model relates the decision maker mindset, based in neuroscience principals, to the efficiency of the knowledge conversion process. These principals are extended to suggest how managers can modulate human resource processes to improve the efficiency of economic exchange and increase supply chain resiliency.

This paper provides theoretical and practical insight into how differences in culture, neuronal predisposition, and genetics may influence managerial decisions. These findings provide a mechanism that researchers and managers may take to expand the boundaries of HRM in a global supply chain.

This work uses a foundation of SCM research to explain efficient conversion in a knowledge-based economy. This perspective demonstrates the criticality of global HRM mindsets and decision processes necessary to achieve competitive advantage in a knowledge-based economy. This provides a context for the study and improvement of neuroeconomic efficiency of firms.

This paper aims to apply service-dominant logic thinking to the field of supply chain management (SCM) in order to classify, structure, and analyze different types of supply chain services (SCS) collected from interdisciplinary literature. The authors investigate how value is co-created between supply chain actors and develop research propositions regarding the influence of service type on value co-creation.

Content analysis is employed to research SCS across 218 articles from 28 journals of logistics and SCM, service, finance and accounting, and information systems research.

The occurrence of SCS within the literature is rising, and most SCS mentioned have a relieving as opposed to an enabling function. Also, SCS related to material and information flows dominate the field, whereas finances-flow-related services receive less attention. Finally, the paper provides evidence that different types of SCS require different management approaches.

Analyzing the literature and integrating different streams of research are only a first step towards building new theory. To test the developed propositions, further empirical research is encouraged.

The paper offers implications for the management of different types of SCS from both the service provider ' s and service customer ' s perspective.

The paper provides an interdisciplinary overview of the value proposed by different types of SCS. Furthermore, six service-dominant logic-based research propositions regarding the impact of service type on value co-creation are developed.

The service‐dominant (S‐D) logic views supply chains as value co‐creation networks. These networks promote knowledge growth amongst network members via resource deployment and coordination. The exchange of knowledge and utilization of operant resources among the network members leads to co‐created service offerings and value proposals for the end‐users, with the ultimate goal of transforming end‐user experiences to perceptions of superior value‐in‐use. The purpose of this paper is to develop an illustration of the value co‐creation concept and use this illustration as guide to examine the research gaps that are yet to be tapped in the area where supply chain networks and S‐D logic intersects.

The literature on S‐D logic is reviewed and research gaps are identified and categorized in three specific groups.

Three categories of research gaps in S‐D logic and supply chain management (SCM) areas include: gaps in utilization of internal operant resources by suppliers, manufacturers, and intermediaries; gaps in knowledge exchange and operant resource utilization between suppliers, manufacturers, and intermediaries; and gaps in knowledge exchange and operant resource utilization between end‐users and value co‐creation network partners.

An illustration of the value co‐creation network from the supply chain perspective is presented in this paper. The illustration of the value co‐creation network provided the guidance to categorize various research gaps in the area of S‐D logic and SCM. This categorization offers a structure from which more systematic research may be produced. It is the authors' hope that the organization and guidance provided in the paper for specific research topics in the S‐D logic area can result in research streams that could potentially offer significant contributions to SCM theory development.

This paper contributes to the social pillar of sustainable supply chain management. It does so by investigating how women managers in the maritime sector handle work-family conflict, thereby acting as institutional entrepreneurs to create a work-family balance logic. The maritime sector is a male-dominated supply chain management environment, which suffers from a talent gap of a lack of women executives. One reason for this problem is work-family balance issues that deter women from staying in the workforce.

The authors interviewed 35 women working as port managers in different developing countries. The authors analyzed their strategies in coping with the conflict between family and work to create a work-family balance logic.

The authors found four different types of strategies to handle work-family conflicts. Responses showed that women executives in this sector can be institutional entrepreneurs. Based on the findings, the authors were able to confirm and contribute to the existing model proposed by Silva and Nunes (2021) on sustainable supply chain logic. The authors also provided recommendations for these women as institutional entrepreneurs and for policymakers to retain women talent in the supply chain management.

The research focuses on a specific supply chain management sector, which is the maritime sector. It also relies exclusively on interview data.

The authors propose recommendations to develop a work-family balance logic and retain talented women in the supply chain industry based on monitoring equality and supporting their need for a work-family balance, both in the short and long terms.

The authors interviewed women executives in one of the most male dominated sectors. The authors studied their ability to cope with work-family conflicts and identified four ways to create a work-family balance logic. These findings enabled us to show the contribution and limits of women executives as institutional entrepreneurs for work family balance logics in male dominated sectors.

This paper aims to provide a starting point to discuss how social enterprises can drive systemic change in terms of social impact through operations and supply chain management.

This paper reviews existing literature and the four papers in this special issue and develops a conceptual framework of how social enterprises and their supply chains create social impact and further enable systematic change.

Our paper finds that social impact and systemic change can be shaped by social enterprises at three different levels of analysis (organization, supply chain and context) and through three enablers (cognitive shift, stakeholder collaboration and scalability). Such dimensions are used to position current literature and to highlight new research directions.

This paper proposes a novel understanding of operations and supply chain management in social enterprises intended as catalysts for systemic change. Based on this premise we distinguish different practices and stakeholders to be considered when studying social impact at different levels. The conceptual framework introduced in the paper provides a new pathway for future research and debate by scholars engaged at the intersection of social impact, sustainable operations and supply chain management.

The purpose of this paper is to elicit the subtle but progressive shift in organizational/institutional interaction with its rivals within a competitive framework, and thereby discusses and analyses paradigm shifts in competition and competitiveness. The paper argues that interorganizational networks and the recent concept of supply chain management may have induced a change in how competitiveness is viewed at the national, industry, and firm levels of interaction.

The paper conceptualizes extant literature into distinct themes of (organizational and institutional) analysis – micro, macro, and meso – and based on this review the paper seeks to identify emerging logics and shifts within mainstream competitiveness literature over the last decade.

The paper suggests that the micro‐macro theme of competition and competitiveness remains dominant in mainstream literature. Results from the analysis also support the notion of emergent logics of competition and competitiveness, which could then imply that a paradigm shift may well have begun within the area of competition and competitiveness.

The limited findings point towards more detailed forays into competition of interorganizational forms such as networks and supply chains, before a paradigm shift may be claimed.

The paper serves to trigger the consciousness of stakeholders to think realistically with regards to claims that competition and competitiveness are carried out on the network level, e.g. a supply chain vs supply chain playing field.

While networks and supply chains have generally been inferred as new frontiers for contemporary competition in different functionally‐oriented literature domains, analysis and performance of such emergent logics is yet to be shown. The classification of different competition logics put forth in this paper aid in systemizing the competitiveness/competition rhetoric.