Supply chain management resilience: a theory building approach

Interest in supply chain disruptions and respective negative consequences has been growing in the last years and the topic is becoming a main stream. This paper aims to propose a model for supply chain resilience management. An inductive theory building approach is used; being identified patterns of management across companies to build a theoretical and testable supply chain resilience model. To this end, content analysis of archival information on 77 companies affected by the Japan earthquake 2011 was used to identify the negative consequences of this event and the patterns of response practices used by companies to avoid or overcome those negative effects. The main conclusions of the study are that despite the earthquake provoked several negative effects, the companies failed to sustain their operations because capacity shortages and material shortages. These failures characterise the earthquake negative effects on supply chain.