Digital Supply Chain: A Proposed Solution to the Global Supply Chain Disruption Impact on Business Sustainability

Introduction

As the world has become a global village, countries have developed many dependencies on each other. With the developed production capabilities within countries, governments and private entities rely on political, economic, cultural, and trade capabilities to respond to their communities’ demands and needs (Davies & Wenham, 2020). For example, Mao and Gorg (2020) emphasized how the United States market relies on imports from China and Mexico to respond to the U.S. community's needs for the consumed products. Like the United States market, many GCC region countries import their communities’ requirements from China (Almujeem, 2021), in addition to the United States and other relevant sources based on the implemented relationship and other factors such as the costs and availability of products (Siderius et al., 2020). The geopolitical relationships between countries provide the decision-makers a comparative advantage in determining their communities’ needs origins. Therefore, countries—besides the power of purchase—need robust supply chain implementations to respond to their communities' needs in a reasonable timeframe and at controlled costs.

A well-designed supply chain network enables business success and allows firms to respond to the targeted demand. Whether the supply chain owner is a governmental entity or a private firm, the ultimate goal is to respond to the needs within a reasonable timeframe and at the right cost to secure a high volume of market demand (Dadzie et al., 2022; Ivanov, 2020). There is always a need for a market-responsive supply chain network to enable success and ensure business sustainability. As a result, organizations need to build resilience in their supply chain components to ensure business sustainability through times of disruption and pandemics.

Many organizations have lost business opportunities since the COVID-19 pandemic. Losing those opportunities had a negative impact on business operations and, ultimately, the gross domestic product (GDP) and employment rates. Many firms, including small and medium-sized enterprises, failed to continue their operations as they lost control of the continuous supply of products and services, which led to losing their market shares (Turner & Endres, 2017). For example, firms operating in the retail industry faced the risk of operations disruptions and the loss of talented calibers. In analyzing the reasons behind such a negative impact on the retail industry, the global supply chain disruption is a critical aspect that impacts the existence of firms and the continuity of their operations (Singh et al., 2020). Lockdowns, closure of borders, securing approved quality products, and lack of containerized shipments represent critical challenges to operating firms. Firms could not secure supplies, hold market shares, achieve profit margins, and retain their talents. Retail organizations’ managers need to find ways to mitigate global supply chain disruption risks. Many business managers may rely on local sources to secure products and services supply, develop business continuity plans, and invest in artificial intelligence to overcome the global supply chain disruption impact on their firms’ operations. However, many managers also took a different approach by adopting a digital supply chain in their systems as a solution that may reduce the impact of global supply chain disruption on business sustainability.

In this chapter, the researcher explored digital supply chain as a proposed solution to the global supply chain disruption impact on business sustainability. The aim of this chapter was to enable business sustainability in the retail industry. The researcher relied on reviewing previous literature, including published case studies of digitization solutions based on their successful implementations highlighting the implementations’ impact on organizations.