Abstract
The COVID-19 pandemic has altered the business landscape for several organizations throughout the world, emphasizing the significance of being able to respond, adapt, and set up crisis management processes in an attempt to withstand uncertain situations. The necessity of supply chain resilience and risk management is more evident than previously as organizations attempt to strengthen operations and business resilience. The authors conducted an empirical investigation within the Nigerian supply chain logistics setting to evaluate and compare the uncertainties, tactics, and strategies employed by two businesses in Nigeria's northeastern region, where insurgency and banditry are rampant, exacerbated by the novel COVID-19 pandemic. The chapter provides a theoretical approach to logistics and supply chain management, delving into the fundamental business processes of the Global Supply Chain Forum (GSCF) and the role of logistics in each of the emphasized businesses.
TopIntroduction
Supply chain risks are categorized into disruption risks and operational, the operational risks are related to common disruptions in SC operations, like lead-time and demand fluctuations, whereas the disruption risks are mostly related to incidents that occur seldom but have large consequences (Hosseini et al., 2019), in regards to duration, significant uncertainty, and ripple effects dispersion, epidemic outbreaks are a specific example of SC hazards (Ivanov, 2020). Volatility and unpredictability in supply chain are fundamental characteristics of supply chain management(SCM) and can emerge in every firm. Natural catastrophes (tornados, flooding, hurricanes, quakes, tsunamis), man-made disasters (nuclear plant disruptions, inadvertent toxic spillages, Conflicts, acts of terrorism), and legal disputes or strikes are all examples of supply chain disruptions that cause uncertainty and volatility. The deterioration of the globe's ecological system, combined with socioeconomic instability, is escalating the frequency and intensity of natural catastrophes, subjecting supply chains to more disruptions to the point where specific incidents can have enormous financial as well as non-financial consequences for supply chains, businesses, and society. Disruptions are fundamental problems in logistics risk management, as they endanger logistics personnel' safety, damage products ((Hazen, Russo, Confente, & Pellathy, 2021)), and obstruct effective logistical operations. Hence, productive risk management preserves a broad variety of stakeholders (Miller, 2017) and assists organizations gain a competitive edge.
Uncertainty is defined by researchers working in strategic management and organizational theory as the volatility of environmental variables that influence organization’s performance or the scarcity of relevant information about these variables (Wang, Wang, & Chan, 2021). The presence of uncertainty in internal and external environmental factors reduces the predictability of company effectiveness and increases the risk (Jha, Sharma, Kumar, & Verma, 2021; Moncef & Monnet Dupuy, 2021. The Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has impacted several Supply chain logistics around the world (Araz et al., 2020). COVID-19's impacts wreaked havoc on the world economy, paralyzing major industries (Ivanov, 2020). According to Fortune (2020), the outbreak has a negative impact on more than 94 percent of top 1000 businesses. SCRM aims to increase a company's performance by ensuring SC robustness and increasing SC resilience. Organizations' capability to reorganize their competences is essential for their sustainability and success in conditions of extreme uncertainty, such as the COVID-19 outbreak. As a result, organizations that can restructure and redeploy their resources in a tumultuous environment are better able to create capacities to buffer the effects of SC disruptions.
Since supply chain logistics encompasses the entire process of conveying products from raw material processing to customer delivery, focusing on supply chain risk management is a step toward increasing the adoption and growth of sustainable practices. (Seuring & Müller, 2008; Shokouhyar, Pahlevani, & Mir Mohammad Sadeghi, 2019; Silva, Alves, Dias, & Nascimento, 2019). Logistics plays an essential role in an organization's quest for sustainability because it represents the integrated management of all the activities required to move products through the supply chain (Li, Yan, Zhang, & Yan, 2021). Whereas robustness describes a firm's ability to sustain its planned performance in the face of a disruption (or series of disruptions), resilience refers to the capacity to recover its performance despite absorbing the disruption impacts. With supply shortages, a lack of responsiveness, and production halts, the COVID-19 pandemic has put the robustness and resilience of supply chain logistics to the test in various industries (Ivanov and Dolgui, 2020). Examining how organizations have gained from previous disruptions to enhance mitigation measures is essential to reducing recovery time during possible risks or disruptions. In essence, understanding supply chain logistics risk management is important and a top priority for both academics and practitioners.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Supply Chain Disruptions: Any occurrence that interrupts the manufacture, sale, or delivery of goods. Natural catastrophes, global wars, and pandemics are all examples of supply chain disruptions.
Supply Chain Management: Is the process of designing, planning, executing, controlling, and monitoring supply processes with the goal of generating net value, constructing a sustainable network, harnessing logistics, coordinating demand and supply, and tracking progress.
Risk Mitigation: Entails the creation of plans that aim to control, eliminate, or potentially reduce risk to a manageable level.
Logistics: The process of acquiring, storing, and transporting materials to their ultimate destination.
Risk Management: The act of detecting, evaluating, and managing threats to a firm's capital and profitability.
Supply Shock: An unforeseen incident that alters the supply of a product or service, culminating in an unanticipated price adjustment.
COVID-19: COVID-19 is a contagious respiratory disease induced by a novel coronavirus variant that infects people.
Supply Chain: A web of people, organizations, resources, activities, and technologies associated with the production and distribution of a product.