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The purpose of this paper is to identify and rank supply chain disruption causes for Western buying firms in the Chinese market; to identify supplier-relationship-specific mitigation strategies to avoid and resist such disruptions; and to develop and propose a framework of relational supply chain disruption management with Chinese suppliers.

Two group exercises with 42 representatives from Western manufacturing buying firms and nine in-depth interviews were conducted. The group exercises applied the nominal group technique.

The authors identified and ranked 22 disruption causes in China for Western buying firms. Evaluating the five most urgent causes, 43 mitigation strategies could be identified that build on implementing strategic relationships with Chinese suppliers. A framework of relational supply chain disruption management for Western buying firms was developed with six propositions on primary constructs, mediators, and moderators, highlighting guanxi as a fundamental construct of relations within the Chinese culture.

The findings contribute to theory development at the intersection of risk management and culture. Quantitative testing of the proposed relationships in the framework is needed to derive more reliable conclusions.

The study depicts how cultural differences between Chinese suppliers and Western buyers influence relational supply chain disruption management strategies. Using the study findings, managers of Western buying firms are informed regarding the most pressing disruption causes in the Chinese market and the value and strategic use of Chinese-supplier relationships.

The study provides a valuable contribution to the scant body of literature on disruption management in supply chains with Chinese suppliers. It contributes to our understanding of a successful risk management in the presence of cultural differences.

The discipline's most common uses for literature reviews—identifying gaps, developing research agendas, and categorizing the literature—too often fail to challenge, change or advance theoretical perspectives. The authors offer guidance to theorization through literature reviews. The key to theory advancement is consistency between the state of theory and the chosen review type.

A conceptual approach is taken. The authors identify shortcomings in literature reviews of logistics and supply chain management (L&SCM) research and develop a framework to aid theorization from literature.

Literature review types are categorized as inductive theory building, contextualized explanations, theory testing and interpretive sensemaking. The authors argue that the effectiveness of a review type depends on the prior state of theory, which ranges from nascent, to intermediate, to mature. The authors propose the interpretive sensemaking review as a novel review type rooted in the interpretive paradigm.

This study should be of immediate interest and value to logistics and supply chain management scholars—as well as scholars in other fields—because it offers a pathway to theory development through literature reviews. Appropriate applications of the proposed review types will result in more comprehensive theories.

This article lays down arguments for the need to change the way L&SCM scholars use literature reviews. It extends earlier work from the authors (Durach et al., 2017; A New Paradigm for Systematic Literature Reviews in Supply Chain Management, Journal of Supply Chain Management) by outlining four review types, and offering further insights to theorization, as is typically the goal in the synthesis step of literature reviews.

“Scale purification” – the process of eliminating items from multi-item scales – is widespread in empirical research, but studies that critically examine the implications of this process are scarce. The goals of this research are threefold: to discuss the methodological underpinning of scale purification, to critically analyze the current state of scale purification in supply chain management (SCM) research and to provide suggestions for advancing the scale-purification process.

A framework for making scale-purification decisions is developed and used to analyze and critically reflect on the application of scale purification in leading SCM journals.

This research highlights the need for rigorous scale-purification decisions based on both statistical and judgmental criteria. By applying the proposed framework to the SCM discipline, a lack of methodological rigor and coherence is identified when it comes to current purification practices in empirical SCM research. Suggestions for methodological improvements are provided.

The framework and additional suggestions will help to advance the knowledge about scale purification.

This paper demonstrates that the justification for scale purification needs to be driven by reliability, validity and parsimony considerations, and that this justification needs to be based on both statistical and judgmental criteria.

The purpose of this paper is to offer empirical insights on emerging additive manufacturing (AM) processes, barriers to their adoption and a timeline of expected impacts on the supply chain in the manufacturing industry.

A multi-stage survey study was conducted with a panel of 16 experts from industry and academia.

Only five out of today’s seven AM processes are of future importance, as are two emerging key processes. In total, 15 barriers to their adoption are identified, all of which are expected to be gone within ten years. Eight propositions are derived postulating as to whether and when supply chain impacts can be expected in terms of changes to supply chain structure, customer centricity, logistics and supply chain capability.

“Soft” barriers are new to the literature, which has traditionally focused on “technical” barriers. Often-discussed barriers such as production speed and costs do not reflect the true concerns of the research panel. Furthermore, some of the supply chain implications discussed in both the academic literature and the media are found to be unlikely to materialize.

The study summarizes AM processes, technologies, barriers and supply chain implications solicited from experts in the field.

This is one of the first studies to make empirical contributions to a vastly conceptual discussion. It is also the first study to give insights on a timeline for barriers and supply chain implications.

Focusing on the apparel industry, this study extends current knowledge on how additive manufacturing (AM) may impact global supply chains regarding structures of interorganizational governance and the industry's social-sustainability issues.

Following an exploratory research design, two consecutive Delphi studies, with three survey rounds each, were conducted to carve out future industry scenarios and assess AM's impact on supply chain governance and social sustainability.

The implementation of AM is posited to reinforce existing supply chain governance structures that are dominated by powerful apparel retailers. Retailers are expected to use the increased production speed and heightened market competition to enforce faster fashion cycles and lower purchasing prices, providing a grim outlook for future working conditions at the production stage.

Against the common narrative that technological progress increases societal well-being, this study finds that new digital technologies may, in fact, amplify rather than improve existing social-sustainability issues in contemporary production systems.

This article contributes to the nascent research field of AM's supply chain impact as one of the first empirical studies to analyze how AM introduction may impact on interorganizational governance while specifically addressing potential social-sustainability implications. The developed propositions relate to and extend the resource dependence and stakeholder perspectives on governance and social sustainability in supply chains. For managers, our results enrich the discussion about the potential use of AM beyond operational viability to include considerations on the wider implications for supply chains and the prevailing working conditions within them.

A conceptual framework of supply chain volatility (SCV) is developed to help researchers and practitioners converge their discussions and understandings on this vital phenomenon. Sources, dimensions and moderators of SCV are investigated and a conceptual framework is proposed. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

Data triangulation was performed through reviewing 2,789 peer-reviewed articles and conducting a group exercise with 23 practitioners. Consequently, 364 sources were identified. Through a structured synthesis process that built on the Q-methodology with multiple academics, a framework of meta-level sources, dimensions and moderators of SCV was developed. An additional on-site meeting with 17 practitioners was conducted aiming at delineating the dimensions by their effect on SCV.

The authors propose 20 meta-level sources that contribute to five distinct dimensions of SCV, proposing behavior of customers and decision makers as contextual moderating variables. A classification scheme consisting of three descriptive SCV-affecting characteristics is proposed to delineate the dimension’s effect on SCV: relative deviating impact, repetitiveness and influenceability. Results are summarized in 15 propositions.

The paper extends knowledge on SCV and provides a coherent conceptualization of the phenomenon for future research. The proposed framework demands quantitative testing to derive more reliable conclusions.

The framework aims at reducing the gap between research and practice. It helps managers to understand researchers’ discussions and how to derive expedient implications from them.

It is the first study that systematically synthesizes widely spread literature in this field to derive a conceptual framework that seeks to explain SCV in a holistic way.

Despite a surge in public and academic interest in the social sustainability conduct of firms, only few firms have taken responsibility for the social issues in their supply chains. This study seeks to extend our theoretical understanding of why some firms grow toward accepting this type of responsibility while others do not.

The authors conduct a systematic literature review for the purpose of theory building. Building on Gao and Bansal's distinction of instrumental and integrative views on business sustainability (2013, DOI 10.1007/s10551-012-1245-2) as well as corporate social responsibility development research, the authors review socially sustainable supply chain management (social SSCM) literature to theorize the interplay of driving factors that underly firms' choice to refrain from, start or deepen their engagement in social SSCM.

The authors propose an overview of the presumed mechanisms underlying the development of a reluctant, a purely instrumental or an integrative view on social SSCM. Among other things, the authors propose that it seems highly unlikely for conventional, profit-oriented firms to develop beyond an instrumental view on social SSCM.

This study conceptually extends current research on social SSCM by offering insights on how firms are driven to engage in it. This study offers first thoughts that should help managers and other stakeholders better understand the social SSCM potential of firms and how to realize this potential effectively.

The purpose of this paper is to, first, explore the role of interpersonal relationships between buying and supplying firms in the management of supply chain disruptions (SCDs). Interpersonal connections are proposed as “social lubricants” that can advance the knowledge about conventional interorganizational antecedents of firm resilience. Differentiating between high- and low-complexity manufacturing industries, the study then looks into how managers from these industry clusters can leverage the efficacy of these relationships through the appropriate use of interorganizational governance mechanisms.

Structural equation modeling is conducted with data collected from 229 manufacturing firms in Austria, Germany and Switzerland. Industry clusters are formed via a Q-sort exercise.

Results support the assumption of a socially embedded, interpersonal dimension in buyer-supplier relationships that impact organizational-level resilience. It is suggested that investments in interpersonal skills and interpersonal complementarity are significant antecedents of both relational and re-deployable firm resilience. Surprisingly, no support was found for a positive impact of interpersonal information sharing on firm resilience, challenging findings from previous studies on an interorganizational level. Interorganizational governance and industry affiliation each have moderating effects on the performance of the resilience efficacy of interpersonal relationship antecedents, suggesting the existence of an important managerial lever.

Integrating the supply chain and behavioral science literature, this study is the first to investigate the interplay of interpersonal and organizational antecedents and their efficacy in the management of SCDs.

This research aims to explore the impact of geographical traits on the occurrence of on-time or the risk of late deliveries – one vital category of supply chain failures. Specifically, the regulatory environment framework and national and organizational culture are explored as potential contingency factors affecting these supply chain failures. Furthermore, the authors assess whether or not potential negative cultural characteristics at the national level can be addressed through specific organizational culture at the organizational level of practice.

This study combines primary survey data from 647 plants in 12 countries collected through the Global Manufacturing Research Group with secondary national data from the World Economic Forum and Hofstede’s national culture dimensions to test the six hypotheses.

Results indicate that firms situated in a regulatory national environment that is conducive to trade experience fewer late deliveries; a national infrastructure that has continuously been neglected leads to more late deliveries. Firms situated in countries with low levels of national uncertainty avoidance experience fewer late deliveries. Supplier communication should be practiced at an organizational level to excel in these countries.

This paper adds to the ongoing discusses about the importance of contingency factors at the country level (i.e. institutional and cultural factors), which need to be considered when setting up global supply chains. It also contributes important empirical insights to the convergence/divergence discussion.