Supply Chain Resilience 2022
This year Raconteur has once again put together a very readable report entitled Supply Chain Resilience 2022. The authors ask, “As disruption continues to plague international supply chains, what can organisations do to build resilience and ensure efficiency?” And they provide answers: “From reducing waste and cutting costs to onshoring and upgrading systems, our Supply Chain Resilience report explores the strategies making the difference”. The report contains short articles on very interesting topics including Brexit, predictive analytics, striking staff, supply chain tech investments, just-in-time vs. just-in-case, chip crisis, robotics, food waste, air cargo, and sustainable commerce. I particularly enjoyed an article that shows how global supply chains have been rocked by climate change, geopolitical instability and more, and that provides examples of different industries adapting to these challenges. It is not the first time that I am writing about Raconteur’s reports here. I am always amazed at the high quality of their work.
Sensemaking in Supply Chains
Something that is long-established in other management disciplines but sadly almost completely neglected in the SCM discipline is research related to sensemaking. In short, sensemaking “involves turning circumstances into a situation that is comprehended explicitly in words and that serves as a springboard into action” (Weick et al., p. 409). Such research is concerned with subjective interpretations rather than objective truth and is therefore better suited to the study of social science phenomena than much of the positivist research we see in contemporary SCM research. Sensemaking is closely associated with the name of Karl E. Weick and his way of analyzing phenomena. Among Weick’s most famous studies is The Collapse of Sensemaking in Organizations: The Mann Gulch Disaster (1993). It could serve as a blueprint for analyzing SCM phenomena. Anyone considering a sensemaking study should read the book Sensemaking in Organizations (Weick, 1995). The article Organizing and the Process of Sensemaking (Weick et al., 2005) gives a very good overview of sensemaking.
Weick, K.E. (1993). The Collapse of Sensemaking in Organizations: The Mann Gulch Disaster. Administrative Science Quarterly, 38(4), 628–652. https://doi.org/10.2307/2393339
Weick, K.E. (1995). Sensemaking in Organizations. SAGE. ISBN 080397177X
Weick, K.E., Sutcliffe, K.M., & Obstfeld, D. (2005). Organizing and the Process of Sensemaking. Organization Science, 16(4), 409–421. https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.1050.0133
