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Supply chain management can be seen as an approach to obtaining the benefits of Vertical Integration without ownership. Vertical Integration has the potential to offer benefits of increased control as well as cost reduction, but supply chain approaches can theoretically provide these same benefits through effective organisation. The concerns with supply chains are discussed under the headings of: innovation, competence and value added, investment flexibility, networks rather than single chains, proprietary design knowledge and dependence. The conclusion is that, where supply chains are identified (even within vertically integrated organisations), then an approach based on effective management of each of the customer‐supplier relationships is key to success. Reference is made to work and materials produced by the Supply Chain Management Group at the University of Glasgow Business School which emphasises the need to implement “best practice” at each point in each chain.

The case presents a significant amount of information on the outbreak of COVID-19 and the expected impact on the economy. Although the case is necessarily concise, several links are given to the online articles and video material on which the case is based. This allows participants to deepen their knowledge of the virus and their understanding of its likely economic impact. To frame the discussion, several philosophies, ranging from Libertarianism to Marxism, are lightly expounded. Readers will need to consider divergent ideas; the sanctity of human life versus the monetary value of a life; the hysteria evoked by COVID-19 deaths versus the placid acceptance of an annual 66,000 deaths by another disease – TB; and the differential economic impact of the virus across extremes of inequality. Perhaps, the key issue relates to the skewness in the death rate: Should young people’s livelihood be sacrificed for a few old people about to die anyway? The case also illustrates the essence of a dilemma – a situation in which a difficult choice has to be made between two or more alternatives, especially ones that are equally undesirable.

In March 2020, South African President Cyril Ramaposa ordered a 21-day national “lockdown” to enable and enforce social distancing in an effort to slow the spread of the COVID-19. Many other countries had already taken similar steps, but in a country with 43,000 murders annually, South Africa’s response to only 11 COVID-19 deaths and 1,071 cases was both rapid and harsh. Schools, businesses, social areas and parks were closed. Medical emergencies, essential services and weekly grocery shopping were the only permissible activities. Two weeks after lockdown, there were 1,845 cases and 18 deaths, a far cry from the predicted 30,000 cases and 300 deaths, estimated on the basis of the three-day doubling rate at the start of lockdown. Many businesses, pulverised by closure, daily wage earners and those fearful of losing jobs were hopeful that the lockdown would not be extended. In a country with immense inequality, how would the masses under the age of 65 years, already in poverty and now with their lives pulled apart by an imported disease of the wealthy, respond to extended social and economic deprivation followed by bailouts for business?

MBA and Executive Education

Teaching Notes are available for educators only.

CSS: 11 Strategy.

The authors welcome the debate hosted by the British Food Journal on the likely size of the outbreak of New Variant CJD, if it is caused by eating BSE‐contaminated beef. We are pleased that there is a substantial measure of agreement between our estimates and those of Ferguson et al., for the most likely number of deaths, even if there is disagreement on the upper bound. We note that our low predictions for vCJD deaths based on vCJD data to the end of 1997 continue to be borne out by figures available at the time of writing, one year later.

Supply chain management is examined and why supplier quality improvement is sometimes more apparent in speech than in action. The concern is that to obtain the required higher quality the suppliers are simply “running faster” on the traditional treadmill. A guide to managing the supply chain is provided and recommendations made for future “best practice” in the light of existing processes.

In response to a paper published in a previous issue of British Food Journal, it criticises the methodology of the previous research. Examines the earlier findings on the projected epidemic size of the new variant of Creutzfeldt‐Jakob Disease (vCJD) in humans. Argues that the earlier research is flawed and there exists no data which can provide adequate predictions for the extent of the vCJD epidemic.

The purpose of this study is to define the interactions that determine how secure a society is from terrorism and to propose a method for measuring the threat of terrorism in an objective and spatio-temporally comparable manner.

Game-theoretic analysis of the determinants of security and discussion of how to implement these interactions into a measure of security.

We show that governments concerned with popularity have an incentive to over-invest in security and that, in certain situations, this leads to a deterioration in net security position. Our discussion provides an implementable means for measuring the levels of threat and protection, as well as individuals’ perceptions of both, which we propose can be combined into an objective and scientific measure of security.

The implication for researchers is the suggestion that efficiency, as well as scale of counter-terrorism, is important in determining a country’s overall security position. Furthermore, we suggest that individuals’ perceptions are at least as important in determining suitable counter-terrorism policy as objective measures of protection and threat. The limitations of this research are found in the vast data requirements that any attempt to measure security will need.

We propose the first method for objectively measuring the net security position of a country, using economic and econometric means.