Manufacturer's Contexts, Supply Chain Risk Management, and Agility Performance

Abstract

The dynamism of the current business environment emanates significant challenges and disruption risks for supply chains. These vulnerabilities in contemporary supply chains have motivated a substantial academic focus on supply chain risk management (SCRM). In the empirical literature on SCRM, a firm's external environment is conceptualized as a source of risk, and various organizational and technological factors are discussed as influencers of SCRM. However, the factors studied in the literature are generally narrow and analyzed in isolation, which has resulted in a fragmented and inconsistent understanding of the role of organizational and technological setups in SCRM. This study offers a systematic understanding of the antecedents and consequences of effective SCRM by investigating the associations between a manufacturer's environmental, organizational, and technological contexts, SCRM, and agility. The study employs the information processing view as the primary theoretical lens and relies on large-scale multi-industry and multicountry survey data for empirical analysis. In contrast to the threat-rigidity thesis, the findings of this study suggest that manufacturers seek collaborative and flexible work settings to respond to environmental challenges. Besides increasing efficiency, such organizational settings and enhanced technological setups can increase information processing capability to enable SCRM and agility. These findings challenge the suggestions that initiatives taken for efficiency can increase the risk factor and deteriorate performance. The study provides novel insights into the underlying information processing mechanisms for effective SCRM and highlights the importance of organizational and technological setups in enhancing these core mechanisms.