ZLC Seminar Series – Supply Chain Disruption Management: Global Convergence vs National Specificity

It is a joint work with Elena Revilla, Professor and DBA Director at IE Business School.

Abstract

As the supply chain expands overseas, there is a growing need for managing supply chain disruptions from a cross-national perspective. This paper investigates whether or not supply chain disruption management (SCDM) can be universally applied. The universality of the SCDM framework is analyzed through the convergent versus divergent (national specificity) debate. On an empirical level, based on a unique sample of 1,403 firms representing 69 countries all over the world and using the GLOBE framework, we compare the level of importance of the eight constructs of our framework and the patterns of relationship between the constructs, across eight country clusters. MANOVA analysis and multiple regression analysis were applied to obtain relevant empirical insights. Surprisingly, our findings suggest that while risk sources are different in the various countries, the implementation of SCDM practices is universal. These results support the existing tension between the convergence theory and the national specificity argument.