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Foreign firms in China, particularly those from the Global West, are in a difficult position as deglobalisation and strained international relations create risk. This paper offers research avenues on how operations and supply chain management scholars can analyse the risk factors, de-risking practices, and de-risking outcomes of foreign firms in China.

This paper is primarily based on interviews with managers of foreign firms’ subsidiaries and joint ventures in China between late 2019 and early 2024 and employs institutional theory to develop a conceptual framework.

Six risk factors motivating foreign firms to consider “China+1” (diversification and multi-sourcing) or “In-China-For-China” (localisation with potential bifurcation) are identified. Four pathways focusing on politics, locations, technologies, and people enable further investigation of these de-risking strategies.

This is the first paper to take a deeper look at perceptions, worries, and considerations of foreign firms in China and offers specific recommendations for impactful research.

This study aims to shape the future trajectory of scholarly research on traditional, reputational and societal supply chain risks and their management.

The research uses a narrative literature review of the overview type. To control bias stemming from the subjectivity of the methodology, the authors synthesized the relevant literature transparently and established various safeguarding procedures.

The established research stream on traditional supply chain risk has generated a wealth of concepts that can potentially be transferred to the study of reputational and societal risks. The maturing research stream on reputational risks has mostly focused on risk manifestation, from the upstream perspective of the focal firm. The emerging scholarship on societal supply chain risks has anecdotally highlighted detrimental effects on contextual actors, such as society-at-large.

This study shifts scholarly attention to the role of the context in the risk manifestation process – as a potential risk source for traditional supply chain risk, during the risk materialization for reputational supply chain risk, and as the locus of the risk effect for societal supply chain risk.

This review is unique in that it fosters a holistic understanding of supply chain risk and underscores the increased importance of the context for it. The socioeconomic, institutional and ecological contexts connect the three reviewed research streams. Detailed research agendas for each literature stream are developed, comprising 23 topical areas in total.