A model of the enterprise supply chain risk propagation based on partially mapping two-layer complex networks

Abstract

With the trend of economic globalization and the rise of the Internet industry, the business environment has become increasingly complex. The impact of an unexpected event on any member of the supply chain network will quickly affect the upstream and downstream enterprises connected to it, which will then cause risk to the whole supply chain network. Therefore, this paper proposes a new supply chain risk diffusion model based on a partial mapping relationship between two-layer complex networks, which aims to study the impact of risk awareness and risk information disclosure awareness. In this model, one layer represents the propagation of resources in the supply chain network, while the other layer represents the diffusion of the supply chain-related information in the social network. In addition, it divides enterprises into two types, namely with risk-aware enterprises or non-risk-aware enterprises. The model introduces the concept of partial mapping, meaning there are just mapping relationships between only partial pairs of nodes in the two-layered network. If a pair of nodes have the correspondence, the enterprises obtaining the information will take effective measures to avoid infection. This partial mapping relationship reflects the differences in enterprises’ awareness of risk information disclosure. After that, by building a probability transition tree, we establish the risk state transition equation in detail using the microscopic Markov chain approach (MMC) and analyze the established equations to deduce the propagation threshold of their supply chain risks analytically. The results show that the propagation threshold is related to network topology, the risk information disclosure awareness of enterprises, and the risk awareness of enterprises. Specifically, the stronger the risk information disclosure awareness and the greater the risk awareness of enterprises, the smaller the scale of supply chain risks eventually formed and the lower the threshold of risk outbreak. In addition, the influence of information disclosure awareness on the final developed risk scale is more significant than that of risk awareness. Finally, the simulation results further verify the model’s feasibility.