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Abstract

We propose a conceptual framework that highlights the importance of logistics, collaboration, sourcing, and knowledge management in achieving supply chain resilience. This framework is developed after extensive literature review of relief supply chains, supply chain resilience, and disaster management disciplines. This review reveals that our understanding of supply chain resilience for food supply chains in a disaster scenario is still in its infancy. We note the lack of any consolidated framework or generalized theory in this area. Different topics related to resilience are usually discussed in isolation; hence, this research has attempted to combine different concepts drawn from various areas into one framework. We postulate that food supply chains can develop certain capabilities such as agility, adaptability, and alignment within the four supply chain domains of logistics, collaboration, sourcing, and knowledge management. Supply chain orientation and risk management culture plays the facilitating role in this framework. Adopting this systems approach would allow greater insights into how food supply chains can become more resilient to natural disasters.

Keywords

vulnerability supply chain resilience disaster management food supply chain

The term supply chain and the adoption of a system-wide (supply chain) view is now a generally accepted way for academia, specialist sectors of industry, and management professionals to discuss and encapsulate the idea of a total supply system. More recently, due to number of ripple effects of supply chain disruptions on economic activities, supply chain management has become a part of the everyday vocabulary of politicians, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), humanitarian managers, and the general public (Christopher & Peck, 2004). Multiple management activities are involved in supply chain management such as sourcing, procurement, and logistics management. Planning and execution of all these activities is a challenging task which demands efficient and effective coordination of informational, relational, and financial flows across the boundaries of a single organization (Ponomarov, 2012). However, every activity conducted in a supply chain has inherent risks which can occur due to some unexpected disruption.

Natural disasters are major cause of supply chain disruptions which can result in major breakdowns of distribution links and production nodes, such as the Japanese Tsunami of 2011 and its effect of the global automotive industry (Handfield, Blackhurst, Elkins, & Craighead, 2007). Managing this rapidly changing risk landscape is challenging and it requires that firms, people, and supply chains become more resilient (van Opstal, 2007). The term disaster resilience can be defined as ability or capacity of an organization or supply chain to absorb the disruptions caused by natural disasters. As consequences of natural disasters are devastating, enhancing disaster resilience of supply chain is necessary for all the actors of a supply chain, especially more for food supply chains when the “end consumer” actually depends on the sustenance for life.

We note that little work has been done on the resilience of supply chain with a particular emphasis on food supply chain in disaster events. Disasters all over the world, both sudden onset and slow onset, have demonstrable effects on food supply chains. Less food is produced and prices rise dramatically due to shortages, thereby increasing the food security concerns all over the world (Edwards et al., 2011). This is a major issue for developing and so-called first world countries alike. Hence, in this article, we intend to develop an integrated framework for food supply chain resilience. Our findings will help in the general understanding of food supply chain resilience and offer insights to the functions and capabilities that are necessary for improving resilience of food supply chain.

Literature Review

Method

The main purpose of this research is to develop an integrated framework for food supply chain resilience especially in the advent of natural disasters. Existing knowledge is always the foundation of future rigorous research. Thus, a literature review is an important tool in generating future knowledge in a given domain. It summarizes the existing research by identifying the existing patterns and issue about the intended topic (Seuring, Müller, Westhaus, & Morana, 2005). As the main topic of this study is resilience to disaster events, therefore, the discussion will focus on the disciplines of supply chain management and also resilience. The second important focus of the review is “food supply chain,” in particular what sort of problems do these supply chains face and how they can improve and ultimately contribute toward the overall community resilience. As the context is natural disaster events, we also incorporate literature on humanitarian logistics and relief supply chains.

We started the review process by searching the key words (resilience, supply chain resilience, supply chain risk, and resilience) on Google scholar. Initial target was to find out the renowned work in this field. We found that most of the work on this topic started after the Cranfield investigation on this topic supply chain resilience and vulnerability (Peck et al., 2003). Second, we observed that there has been an increasing trend in number of studies on resilience from 2008 to 2012. We also scrutinized the resilience concept and noted resilience is related to events that have a low probability but a high impact, in contrast to risk management literature that seeks to manage events with a high probability but a low impact (Sheffi & Rice, 2005). These high impact events are often related to natural and man-made disasters. We also found that during disasters, food is one of the most essential elements for relief, with immediate need. Therefore, food supply chains are very important for over all relief of the victims and community. We extended our search with related key words for disaster and food supply chain (disaster management, relief supply chains, food supply chain, food supply chain resilience) and focused on the most cited work. Based on this initial search, a list of key words was prepared to further search different online databases (Emerald, Web of Science, ABI/INFORM Global, EBSCO, Science Direct, Taylor & Francis, Springer, JSTOR, and SAGE). We also searched in specific journals which were relevant to the topics such as the Journal of Humanitarian Logistic and Supply Chain Management. The inclusion criteria were based on the publishing years (2000-2015), peer reviewed articles, books, reports, and peer reviewed conference papers. Some of the articles were also included prior to 2000 if they were the basis of some important concepts. The articles were investigated carefully and with due diligence for their possible inclusion in the review. The first round of deletion was started by assessing the title and abstract. Some of the articles were discarded because of the repetition or essentially very similar coverage. The final list of articles were thus critically reviewed and important points, findings, conclusions, and summaries are included in the final draft to identify research and theoretical issues, and methods in the given domains. Figure 1 portrays the major steps taken in this methodology.

Figure 1.

The search process.

Disaster Management and Relief Supply Chains

The term disaster refers to a breakdown in the normal functioning of a community that has an adverse impact on the people of a community, their lifestyle, work, and environment. This situation can be a result of natural events or man-made activities. Natural events typically comprise of weather events, such as floods, hurricanes, biological and others such as landslides and earthquakes, and so on. Human activities like wars and terrorism which sometimes are referred to complex emergencies often lead to mass displacement of people for longer terms, famine, and outflows of refugees (Pan American Health Organization [PAHO], 2001). The World Economic Forum found that around 250 million people are affected by natural disasters every year (Howell, 2013). However, only 3% of relief activities are devoted to natural disasters (Van Wassenhove, 2006). Therefore, more attention needs to be focused toward natural disasters. There are two main streams of disaster relief: continuous aid work and sudden disaster relief (Thomas & Kopczak, 2005). Our proposed research framework will focus only on natural disasters, especially, sudden onset disasters (earthquakes and floods) due to its effect on local food production and distribution chains.

“Disaster management” is a discipline of avoiding risks before impact of disaster and dealing with risks once disaster has happened. No country or community is immune to the adverse impacts of disasters. However, disasters can be prepared for, responded to, and recovered from, and their consequences can be mitigated (Haddow, Bullock, & Coppola, 2007). Specific phases of disaster management life cycle vary from research to research. The United Nations Department of Humanitarian Affairs (UNDHA; 1992) has talked about two phases of disaster management. The first phase is disaster mitigation (assessment, prevention, and preparedness) which deals with situation prior to a disaster. The second phase is response (relief, rehabilitation, and reconstruction) which obviously deals with the aftermath of a disaster. Kovács and Spens (2007) separate the disaster life cycle into three phases: preparedness, response, and reconstruction. However, a more recent approach has been to adopt the four phased cyclic model of mitigation, preparedness, response, and recovery (Haghani & Afshar, 2009; Safran, 2003). We acknowledge the strength of this cyclic model, but opt for a three-phase approach for parsimony combining mitigation and preparedness. We hence arrive at the three main phases for our model of preparation, response, and postdisaster rehabilitation. These three phases are also in line with the resilience concept that will be discussed in the coming sections.

As we are interested in food supply chain resilience, we examine the literature for supply chain management within the disaster management discipline. In the humanitarian context, supply chain can be defined as the process of planning, implementing, and controlling the flow and storage of relief items as well as information and finances from point of origin till the point of utilization to remove the suffering of people (Thomas & Kopczak, 2005). Although disaster relief supply chains have to deal with special challenges, the basic philosophies of commercial supply chains often remain valid. However, there are certain specific characteristics which make relief supply chains unique. In disaster relief supply chain, demand for relief is unpredictable, multiple organizations are involved, numbers of volunteers are involved, transportation is incapacitated or limited, and local infrastructure is paralyzed. All these issues make disaster supply chain management very challenging as compared with commercial supply chains (Kovács & Spens, 2007). To manage relief supply chains effectively, some of the areas which are greatly highlighted in literature are knowledge management (Islam & Chik, 2011; Pathirage, Seneviratne, Amaratunga, & Haigh, 2012), sourcing decisions (Ertem, Buyurgan, & Rossetti, 2010; Kovács & Spens, 2007), collaboration among different supply chain players (Asgary, Anjum, & Azimi, 2012; Jahangiri, Izadkhah, & Tabibi, 2011), and logistic support (Holguín-Veras, Jaller, Van Wassenhove, Pérez, & Wachtendorf, 2012; Jain, Jain, John, & Ramesh, 2012; Jensen, 2012; Liberatore, Ortuño, Tirado, Vitoriano, & Scaparra, 2014; Sandwell, 2011). We incorporate these important concepts into our framework.

So far, authors have mostly talked about different humanitarian relief organizations and their supply chains such as NGOs in a time of crisis (Balcik, Beamon, Krejci, Muramatsu, & Ramirez, 2010; Beamon, 2004; Day, Melnyk, Larson, Davis, & Whybark, 2012; Kovács & Spens, 2007). Yet, we argue that local food supply chains, which in normal conditions would be considered as commercial supply chains, would also be considered part of the relief/humanitarian effort. These supply chains also face similar kinds of problems as relief agencies during a time of disaster. Although there is an increasing trend for research on relief supply chains of humanitarian organizations, there is little or no research on how local commercial food supply chains survive disasters and become part of the relief effort.

Supply Chain Vulnerability (SCV) and Resilience

Supply chains are complex networks of organizations (Hearnshaw & Wilson, 2013) that experience nonstop turbulence which create a potential for unpredictable disruptions. According to different executives, the greatest threat to organizations is supply chains risks (Global, 2007; Micheli, Mogre, & Perego, 2014). Different kinds of turbulence and a high degree of complexity in supply chains demand a systems view and coordination among business functions within the company as well as interorganizational alignment among different players of a supply chain (Slone, Mentzer, & Dittmann, 2007). However, due to environmental changes, supply chains have become more complex and vulnerable, thus adding to potential supply chain disruptions (Pettit, Fiksel, & Croxton, 2010). Hence, organizations must learn to foresee, absorb, and overcome disruptions (Pickett, 2006).

Different Methods to Counter Disruptions

From the early 19th century, the main strategy to counter supply chain disruptions was by holding inventory. With the advent of service sector and customer satisfaction in opposition to inventory carrying costs, production costs, transportation costs, and distribution costs became the focal point of supply chain managers (Kent & Flint, 1997). To cope with increasing customer demands and to mitigate risks associated with high inventory levels, quick response mechanisms were developed such as vendor-managed inventory (VMI) and just-in-time (JIT; Tan, 2001). However, these quick response systems have increased the vulnerability of supply chains to disruptions in that they have seriously reduced buffer and safety stocks. Supply and demand has also become closely coupled and while this is desirable in efficiency and response terms, it becomes a vulnerability in turbulent times leading to more chances of disruption in these supply chains (Wagner & Bode, 2009). Similarly, Lean manufacturing and Six Sigma all focus on reducing buffer stocks and more closely matching capacity with demand pull systems. Given that redundancy in inventory and capacity are critical for immediate response to natural disasters, we find that these paradigms shed no light on how to cope with disruptions and disasters. The ability of a system to cope with disruptions is frequently termed resilience. Hence, “resilience” has become a new “buzzword” in literature that promises to reduce risk and bring stability in systems such as supply chains. Resilience is also associated with robustness and adaptability. In the coming section, we will develop the concept of resilience by reviewing literature on vulnerabilities and different techniques to foresee, mitigate, and recover from disruptions.

SCV

Researchers have studied SCV in different ways. Some of them have studied SCV conceptually (Brooks, 2003; Singh-Peterson & Lawrence, 2014; Svensson, 2000), some have studied it analytically (Bakshi & Kleindorfer, 2009; Stecke & Kumar, 2009), and some also provided empirical support to the concept (Wagner & Neshat, 2012). Table 1 shows some of the definitions of SCV by different authors. Most definitions talk about two main characteristics of SCV, supply chain design variables, and environmental factors where supply chains are working. Singh-Peterson and Lawrence (2014) define vulnerability as degree of a system’s susceptibility to disruptions and its ability to cope with these changes. Asbjørnslett (2009) narrates that vulnerability can be assessed by studying supply chain processes, infrastructure, and its operations. However, Bakshi and Kleindorfer (2009) consider vulnerability as combination of infrastructure and environmental factors. Whenever a disaster occurs (slow onset or sudden), a supply chain disruption event is triggered. This trigger event manifests certain expected or unexpected risks but this risk is not the only determinant on final loss. Wagner and Bode (2009) state that susceptibility of the supply chain to these harms is also very important.

Table 1.

Definitions of Supply Chain Vulnerability.

Authors	Definitions
Singh-Peterson and Lawrence (2014)	Degree of a system’s susceptibility to disruptions and its ability to cope with these changes. It aimed to determine systems sensitivity to change and its inability of response to sudden change.
Bakshi and Kleindorfer (2009)	Probability of occurrence of disruption. This possibility is determined by kind of infrastructure and combination of environmental factors.
Asbjørnslett (2009)	A concept that characterize supply chain’s lack of resilience with respect to threats from both within and outside systems boundary.
Svensson (2000)	Condition that is result of time and collaboration dependencies in a firm’s business activities in supply chains.
Jüttner, Peck, and Christopher (2003)	Tendency of risk sources and drivers to outweigh risk mitigating strategies which result in worst supply chain consequences.
Wagner and Bode (2009)	Vulnerability of any supply chain is the function of certain supply chain characteristics and the loss a company bears is the result of supply chain vulnerability to a given supply chain disruption.
Neil Adger (1999)	Degree of loss as a result of disaster. It is exposure of community or individuals to stress as a result of social or natural change.
Wisner (2004)	Characteristics of an individual or a group in terms of their capacity to foresee, cope with, resist and recover from impact of some disruption.

For disruptions which have high probability and low consequences, those can be dealt with risk management (Jüttner, Peck, & Christopher, 2003). However, disruptions with low probability and high consequences (e.g., natural disasters) require special treatment. That special treatment is the relatively new concept of supply chain resilience. This also implies that vulnerability analysis is an important element of resilience concept (Sheffi & Rice, 2005).

Supply Chain Resilience

Resilience is the ability of a system to bounce back from a disturbance (Zakour & Gillespie, 2013). Resilience was originally an ecological concept but now it is increasingly being used in social sciences including disaster and vulnerability management. In ecology, resilience can be defined as the ability of a system to bounce back from a disruption while still maintaining integrity, diversity, and processes (Folke et al., 2004). Electrical distribution discipline has also focused on resilience concept frequently as bouncing back to the normal operations in a timely manner after the breakdown (Maliszewski & Perrings, 2012; Shan, Felder, & Coit, 2017). Electricity system resiliency focuses on prevention, protection, mitigation, response, and recovery (Shan et al., 2017). Supply chains can be considered as network of these individual systems (Pettit et al., 2010). Based on this systems approach, Fiksel (2003) has categorized four important characteristics of resilient systems: adaptability, coherence, efficient, and diversity. Resilience in humanitarian supply chain context emphasizes the different approaches a system can respond to natural disasters. It also emphasizes its ability to bounce back from these situations, absorb severe impacts, learn from, adapt to, and recover well from disruptions (Berkes, 2007).

One of the first comprehensive studies on supply chain resilience was conducted by Cranfield University (Peck et al., 2003). The Center of Logistics and Supply Chain Management explored the industrial knowledge base of United Kingdom. The main aim of this report was to increase the resilience of U.K. industry to cope with supply chain–related threats in the business continuity. They emphasized that vulnerability analysis and resilience are important business functions. They also highlighted the fact that little research has been done so far on these topics. This report contains recommendations for improving supply chain resilience noting that different supply chains have different mechanisms for resilience (Peck et al., 2003). Christopher and Lee (2004) argue that supply chain confidence can be increased by visibility and control. Confidence in supply chain is one of the best ways to deal with supply chain disruptions and is gained after the fact by its ability to recover from adversity. They argue that one way to increase control is “event management” where predetermined supply/inventory is placed at critical nodes to manage material flow disruptions in a whole network. If some disruption occurs at these nodes, then a warning is sent to all supply chain actors to enable corrective actions.

According to Abe and Ye (2013), firms (retailers, wholesalers, suppliers) can adopt risk reduction strategies to increase the disaster resilience. They should carefully consider the balance between supply chain efficiency and disaster risk preparation. Sourcing from one single supplier can increase profitability, but it also makes retailers more vulnerable to disasters. On the contrary, multisourcing will considerably increase transaction costs. Hence, firms should conduct a full cost benefit analysis to increase resilience. They should also select suppliers on the basis of risk reduction criteria rather than on pure cost minimization. Supply chain visibility can be increased by the use of monitoring systems and shortening of supply chain (disintermediation). A comprehensive assessment of a company’s vulnerability to disruptions and the impact of a disaster on firm’s supply chain can facilitate establishment of risk transfer and mitigation strategies (Abe & Ye, 2013).

Adaptability should be a key trait in resilient supply chains, as the new state after disruption can be very different from the original one. Christopher (2005) reveals that agility and flexibility are key elements of resilient supply chains processes. The dynamic nature of adaptive capability makes it easy for supply chain to bounce back or achieve a more appropriate state after disruption. Christopher and Peck (2004) have also conceptualized supply chain resilience and included elements like supply base strategy, risk categorization, supply chain risk management culture, and collaboration strategies. They have also talked about agility, availability, efficiency, redundancy, and visibility as secondary factors. Although they point out interesting points of view, they offer no empirical justification.

Goranson (1999) has differentiated between agility and flexibility, with flexibility being planned adaptations to sudden but expected external disruptions. However, agility is unplanned adaptation to unexpected external circumstances. At the same time, a few authors consider flexibility as being part of agility (Stevenson & Spring, 2007). Similarly, Rice and Caniato (2003) offer two methods, flexibility and redundancy, with greater potential to improve resilience. Redundancy is an excess of capacity or inventory which can be used to replace the capacity lost during disasters. On the contrary, flexibility is the previously committed capacity which is redeployed. Similarly, Lee (2004) also suggested that for combating demand and supply uncertainties, supply chain processes need to have agility, adaptability, and alignment to achieve superior performance. Agility means responding to short-term changes quickly to handle external disruptions smoothly. Adjusting the design of the supply chain to meet structural shifts in the market is called adjustment. Alignment means to exchange information and knowledge frequently with supply chain partners to achieve better performance.

Resilient supply chain capability, as Park (2011) says, is an adaptive capability of supply chains to prepare for disastrous situation, responding to these situations and effectively recovering from it. This preparedness, response, and recovery can be done by maintaining required level of process continuity at the desired level of control and connectedness over supply chain structure. Park has further classified supply chain capabilities into readiness capability, response capability, and recovery capability. Readiness stage of resilience develops certain capabilities which refer to coordination of resources to detect and prevent future disruptions in supply chain. Response stage capabilities mostly refer to actively dealing with disasters and providing the information related to a particular disruption to all supply chain entities. Finally, recovery stage capabilities deals with interaction among all players and sharing of resources to bounce back to normal operations.

Consequently, Craighead, Blackhurst, Rungtusanatham, and Handfield (2007) discuss risk mitigation capabilities in supply chains and have divided them into two categories. The first one is recovery capability which is defined as interaction of different entities and their resources to effectively deal with disruption. The second is warning capability which is ability to foresee disruptions. Based on this research, Park (2011) propose that these mitigation strategies moderate the relationship between supply chain design features in terms of complexity and disruption severity. Nevertheless, flexibility and redundancy are clearly two important concepts for supply chain resilience, but there are many other capabilities which are necessary. Sometimes, both these capabilities are implemented simultaneously to deal with disruptions. It is also not clear that to what extent firms need to implement these two concepts to deal with disruptions.

On similar grounds, Pettit et al. (2010) have developed a conceptual framework by combining different dimensions of vulnerabilities and capabilities. They proposed that if vulnerabilities are high as compared with capabilities, this will lead to unbalanced resilience means which will ultimately lead to excess risk. Similarly, if vulnerabilities are low in contrast to capabilities, then there is still an unbalanced resilience, but it will lead to eroded profitability. However, balanced resilience can be achieved if the portfolio of vulnerabilities is matched to the pattern of capabilities, and this can be portrayed in form of high performance. They refined this conceptual framework through focus groups; however, they asked for empirical investigation support to theoretically derived proposition.

On the whole, the literature on supply chain resilience is scattered. No doubt the existing literature on supply chain resilience is very informative; however, it is primarily focused on multiple fragmented perspectives of resilience (Christopher & Rutherford, 2004; Park, 2011; Peck et al., 2003; Pettit et al., 2010; Ponomarov & Holcomb, 2009; Sheffi & Rice, 2005). These different views highlight the importance of this topic. Similarly, a number of necessary elements which form resilience like agility, adaptability, and flexibility are also separately discussed. Summary of the related topics are shown in Table 2.

Table 2.

Summary of the Key Concepts for Resilient Supply Chains.

Discussed aspect	References	Research summary
Risk management	Christopher and Lee (2004); Jüttner, Peck, and Christopher (2003)	Effective risk management culture is an effective moderator of supply chain resilience.
Agility, effectiveness	Christopher (2000, 2005); Christopher and Rutherford (2004)	Quick response to disastrous situations can be called as resilience which is closely associated with concept of agility.
Flexibility, redundancy	Goranson (1999); Peck et al. (2003); Rice and Caniato (2003)	Flexibility and redundancy have great potential to overcome resilience. Redundancy is excess of capacity which can be used to replace the capacity lost during disasters.
Visibility	Christopher and Peck (2004)	Increasing visibility on both supply and demand side reduce element of uncertainty in supply chains.
Supply chain structure, understanding of supply chain	Hearnshaw and Wilson (2013)	Knowledge of complex supply chain structure and better understanding will surely increase resilience.
Knowledge management	Pettit, Fiksel, and Croxton (2010)	Knowledge management and learning in time of disaster are important element of supply chain resilience.
Reduction of uncertainty	Berkes (2007)	Reduction of uncertainty increases supply chain resilience.
Collaboration, coordination	Ponomarov and Holcomb (2009)	Risk can be managed more effectively through coordination and collaboration.
Reduction of complexity, supply chain reengineering	Peck et al. (2003)	Complexity of supply chain can be reduced through business process reengineering to increase resilience.
Adaptability	Fiksel (2003); Pettit et al. (2010)	For combating demand and supply uncertainties, supply chain processes need to have agility, adaptability, and alignment to achieve superior performance.
Alignment	Lee (2004)	High degree of complexity in supply chains demand an enterprise view with coordination among all business functions within the company as well as interorganizational alignment among different players of supply chain.
Contingency planning	Tomlin (2006)	Contingency plans are necessary to address risks in supply chain.
Supply base strategy	Christopher and Peck (2004)	Single vs. multiple sources and knowledge about supplier’s risk awareness are important element to be considered in resilience.

Food Supply Chains

It is suggested that climate change will trigger more severe weather events such as monsoons and cyclones that bring heavy floods in different countries regularly. Similarly, the earthquake ratio from last 10 years is increasing and expected to rise in the next 50 years. Rising temperature also melts snow on mountains which results in floods especially near river bed areas (Aggarwal, Joshi, Ingram, & Gupta, 2004). These floods can badly affect agricultural land. Crops are destroyed, and infrastructure and transportation also get badly disrupted. Food prices increase, often dramatically, and retailers and other supply chain players do not get supplies on time, all effecting the local community badly. Douglas (2009) urges governments, NGOs, international disaster management organizations, and researchers to take action because future disaster will damage existing transport and communications for a longer period of time and will affect a wider area. This will make food supplies movement more difficult. Longer wet periods will also affect production and storage of food unless these food supply chains can become more resilient.

Several studies review food supply chains in general (Acharyulu & Mathew, 2006; Burch & Lawrence, 2007; Campbell & MacRae, 2013; Farhat, 2012), and discuss their problems both in developed and under developed countries. Yet, few of these studies have talked about these food supply chains in the context of resilience in the private sector (Dani & Deep, 2010; Leat & Revoredo-Giha, 2013; Vlajic, Van der Vorst, & Haijema, 2012). Even less have actually talked about them in context of disasters in developing countries (Keogh, Apan, Mushtaq, King, & Thomas, 2011; Singh-Peterson & Lawrence, 2014). For example, in 2010, Pakistan faced a severe flood. This flood has affected over 17 million acres of most fertile croplands in a country where farming is an economic foundation. The water killed almost 200,000 livestock and washed away large quantities of stored commodities. Prices of fresh food rose to more than double in big cities in first week of flood. Food retailer associations and government officials expected to see prices rise by multiple of six within few weeks of a disaster. Retailers could not get milk supply for number of days. One of the large milk wholesaler’s inventories ran out in less than a week and they were supplying packaged milk to 35% of retail market (Ellick, 2010). Concurrently, Peck (2006) argues that food contamination is what retailers and their suppliers are most afraid of because it can destroy their brand image (Song & Zhuang, 2017). As most of the retailers are present within a city, they are most vulnerable to disasters. The transporters, manufacturers, and distributors are also badly affected by the loss of infrastructure, electricity, and fuel shortages. Retail and distribution sites are also sometimes destroyed as a result of a disaster; loss of people (employees who are working for different organizations) can also badly affect supply chain operations.

To improve disaster response, especially in context of food supply chains, Douglas (2009) says that strengthening local community resilience is very important. This resilience can be achieved through local food stocks, through local shelter, by supporting local community groups (retailers), and by making sure of good local governance by authorities. Aggarwal et al. (2004) suggest that strategies to reduce the vulnerability of local food supply chains to disasters need to be based on technical and policy combinations. For achieving this goal, one should have a deeper understanding of how the local food supply chain work in practice and how these supply chains interact with local community as well as with other humanitarian supply chains.

Conceptual Framework

Based on the literature review of the domain of disaster/relief supply chain, food supply chain, and supply chain resilience, this research has derived a framework presented in Figure 2. Disaster management literature has emphasized on four main areas of supply chain which are very important during certain disaster; these are knowledge management (Islam & Chik, 2011; Pathirage et al., 2012), sourcing decisions (Ertem et al., 2010; Kovács & Spens, 2007), collaboration among different supply chain players (Asgary et al., 2012; Jahangiri et al., 2011), and logistic (Holguín-Veras et al., 2012; Jain et al., 2012; Jensen, 2012; Liberatore et al., 2014; Sandwell, 2011). We argue that effectively dealing with these areas enhances the resilience of supply chains as activities involved in these areas contribute toward achieving agility, adaptability, and alignment which are established capabilities of supply chain resilience in literature.

Figure 2.

Conceptual framework: Food supply chain resilience.

For example, in collaboration area, if organizations are sharing information with each other, then this activity contributes toward achieving velocity and flexibility which are part of supply chain agility and thus resilience (Pettit et al., 2010). Similarly, it will also help achieving alignment of processes in different organizations which helps in achieving resilience. However, these activities demand empirical investigation which is not the scope of this current research.

Similarly, literature talks about the different facilitating factors which facilitate supply chain capabilities to increase resilience. We propose that risk management culture and supply chain orientation are facilitating factors for creating resilient food supply chains. Relational view of resource-based theory as well as resource dependence theory asserts that in uncertain times, stronger relationship among organizations allows them to utilize resources from their partners to sustain and survive (Dyer & Singh, 1998). In supply chain context, having strong and close relationship with suppliers and customers is the basis of surviving the disasters. This strong relationship is only possible if individual organizations recognize the importance of these relationships. This recognition is called supply chain orientation and without this recognition logistics, collaboration, sourcing, and knowledge management will be not effective. Therefore, this phenomenon will facilitate these areas.

Although resilience is mostly talked about in terms of mega disasters, however, if risk management culture is missing in the supply chain, then organizations cannot achieve resilience. Therefore, we propose that this is the facilitating factor for all four areas we mentioned above.

Finally, we have proposed three outcomes of food supply chain resilience based on the literature mentioned above under food supply chain heading; however, these are only proposed outcomes, but empirical investigation will reveal further insights into these concepts.

Conclusion

This framework is offered as an extension to the literature and an attempt to synthesize a number of different literature areas into a comprehensive systems view of supply chain resilience. We have identified the need for more research on supply chain resilience and, in particular, the current lack of research of the resilience and performance of food supply chains in areas disrupted by natural disaster events. This framework will be empirically tested in forthcoming research focusing on a number of food supply chains in two regions in New Zealand, one disrupted by severer annual flooding and the other by major earthquakes. This task will provide a real challenge in terms of quantifying and modeling risk and resilience; hence, another contribution of this research will be some instruments that will allow these concepts to be captured. By deriving this framework from common commercial definitions and language, we will also be able to study commercial supply chains with respect to disaster management best practices. There are naturally limitations of this framework especially around the concepts selected for inclusion and the numerous other supply chain and resilience concepts that have been excluded. Nevertheless, we believe that this framework will provide some further empirical and theoretical insights.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Author Biographies

Muhammad Umar has expertise in supply chain and project management discipline. His current area of research is supply chain resilience in natural disaster context.

Mark Wilson specializes in supply chain management and has over 23 years industry and defense experience in the fields of logistics and strategic supply chain management and operations at both tactical and senior managerial levels. Currently, he is researching humanitarian logistics, complex adaptive systems, network theory, supply chain governance, and collaboration. He has published in national and international journals.

Jeff Heyl expertise resides in business management, economics, and operations management. His specific research interests are quality management and measurement in both manufacturing and service environments, procurement systems and practices, supply chain management, and managing process change for complex systems.

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Food Network Resilience Against Natural Disasters: A Conceptual Framework

Abstract

Keywords

Literature Review

Method

Disaster Management and Relief Supply Chains

Supply Chain Vulnerability (SCV) and Resilience

Different Methods to Counter Disruptions

SCV

Supply Chain Resilience

Food Supply Chains

Conceptual Framework

Conclusion

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

Funding

Author Biographies

References