Overcoming blind spots in global sourcing research: Exploiting the cross-sections between supply chain management and international business

Integration of the buyer–supplier interface for Global sourcing

While global sourcing often implies that the firm needs to, for example, redesign the procurement organization and make decisions on what to centralize and what to manage locally, global sourcing also has direct implications for management of the buyer–supplier interface. This study takes an organization design focus and addresses global sourcing organization design as well as provides illustrations on how to integrate the buyer–supplier interface for global sourcing. Integration is conceptualized as coordination and cooperation. The paper is based on an embedded unit case study of a global technical industrial product and service systems provider, TechInd (pseudonym). Data was collected from TechInd as well as from six of its suppliers. The findings indicate that the global sourcing organization structure, as well as the differences in the buyer’s sourcing and supplier’s sales organizations, pose requirements for management of the interface in terms of coordination and cooperation. Challenges arising particularly due to differences in geographical scope and level of centralization can be managed by introducing the key account role and alignment of incentives.

The disruption of the international supply chain: Firm resilience and knowledge preparedness to tackle the COVID-19 outbreak

The lockdowns of several countries due to COVID-19 outbreak resulted in severe economic consequences, among which was the immediate general disruption of the international supply chain, with few exceptions. This article aims to investigate whether some supply chains were resilient or not and why, using a knowledge-based approach and specifically focusing on the role played by supply chain innovation in building resilience to disruptions, thanks to knowledge preparedness. The study is motivated by two main rationales: the unique situation of a global pandemic and the absence of studies providing grounded evidences of supply chain resilience in a worst-case scenario.

The research is based on the assumption that knowledge preparedness introduces logistics/supply chain innovations and enables companies to prevent, detect, and respond to unpredictable negative events.

By using a large-scale sample of European firms' data from the Eurostat and a multivariate regression analysis, the authors cross-study the effects of supply chain knowledge preparedness – based on innovation type and expenditures – on the international trade of goods from January to June 2020. The results confirm that the most resilient supply chains were those that had previously introduced innovations, a factor that strengthens the knowledge preparedness of firms when faced with unforeseeable supply chain disruptions.

Asset tracking, condition visibility and sustainability using unmanned aerial systems in global logistics

The scale and scope of global logistics systems make real-time visibility of individual assets in global logistics systems difficult. Aggregating global logistics data to a manageable level where interruptions and disruptions can be anticipated or resolved is high on the wish list of global logistics managers and decision makers. Asset tracking and condition visibility in global supply chains is also difficult because few standards or metrics have been assessed in a supply chain, particularly when new technology is introduced, such as unmanned aerial systems in global supply chains. In this paper, we describe the integration of an unmanned aerial system in a global logistics system, and the metrics used to assess the integrated system. We highlight the importance of supply chain process, business impact, societal and environmental sustainability metrics, in addition to economic and supply chain performance metrics, in evaluating the integrated system.