The Evolution of Resilience in Supply Chain Management: A Retrospective on Ensuring Supply Chain Resilience

• Author: Joseph Fiksel,Keely L. Croxton,Timothy J. Pettit
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/jbl.12202
• Date: 01 March 2019
• Published date: 01 March 2019

The Evolution of Resilience in Supply Chain Management: A

Retrospective on Ensuring Supply Chain Resilience

Timothy J. Pettit

1

, Keely L. Croxton

2

, and Joseph Fiksel

2

1

National University

2

The Ohio State University

We opened our 2010 paper in the Journal of Business Logistics with a 6th century quote by Heraclitus –“The only constant is change.”

This immutable law certainly holds in today’s volatile business world, especially for supply chain management, and has been the driving

factor behind the interest in resilience. Since the seminal works of the mid-to-late 1990s and early 2000s, the supply chain discipline has pro-

gressed toward a common understanding of resilience. But we’re not there yet. This paper reflects on the impact of our 2010 paper, and envi-

sions future opportunities for advances in resilience that will improve both day-to-day business continuity and long-term sustainability. We are

honored to be selected for this 40th Anniversary Issue of the Journal of Business Logistics, and proud that our paper has been recognized as

the most cited of the decade.

Keywords: supply chain management; resilience; risk management

INTRODUCTION

We opened our 2010 paper in the Journal of Business Logistics

with a sixth-century quote by Heraclitus—“The only constant is

change.”This immutable law certainly holds in today’s volatile

business world, especially for supply chain management, and has

been the driving factor behind the interest in resilience. Since the

seminal works of the mid-to-late 1990s and early 2000s, the sup-

ply chain discipline has progressed toward a common under-

standing of resilience. But we are not there yet. This paper

reflects on the impact of our 2010 paper and envisions future

opportunities for advances in resilience that will improve both

day-to-day business continuity and long-term sustainability. We

are honored to be selected for this 40th Anniversary Issue of the

Journal of Business Logistics and proud that our paper has been

recognized as the most cited of the decade.

Premise behind the original research and its contributions

The concept of supply chain resilience gained attention in the

early 2000s after the publication of seminal research by Christo-

pher and Peck (2004) and Sheffi(2005). At that time, resilience

had already been well studied in other fields. For example, mate-

rial scientists investigated how objects return to their original

shape after being deformed, ecologists studied how living sys-

tems bounce back from a disturbance (e.g., Holling 1973), psy-

chologists and sociologists explored what makes individuals and

communities resilient after a setback (Adger 2000; Bonanno

2004),and management scholars examined the role of personal

resilience in organizational leadership. We believe that there

were two factors stimulating the application of resilience con-

cepts to supply chain management.

First was evidence that the business environment was becom-

ing more turbulent (Hamel and Valikangas 2003). Globalization

of both procurement and distribution, along with climate change,

was contributing to an increase in disruptions throughout supply

chains, while supply chains were becoming more complex and

brittle (Hendricks and Singhal 2005). Increased outsourcing and

shrinking supply bases led to greater dependence on suppliers,

while a focus on quick response (e.g., just-in-time) and Six

Sigma eroded buffers and decreased flexibility (Revilla and

Saenz 2017). As companies “leaned out”their operations, they

began to recognize the limitations of these strategies in the face

of increasingly volatile conditions (Mason-Jones et al. 2000).

Second was the realization that traditional risk management

techniques lacked the capacity to foster a more resilient enter-

prise. Enterprise risk management (ERM), the prevailing

approach in large corporations, offers a strategic process for

identifying risks faced by various businesses, determining the

firm’s“risk appetite,”and utilizing risk control strategies, includ-

ing insurance, to achieve an acceptable level of risk (Dickinson

2001). While ERM is a valuable practice, organizations need

new strategies to deal with supply chain turbulence. Specifically,

ERM is rooted in a simplistic, “reductionist”worldview; each

risk is identified and addressed independently, while hidden

interactions are seldom recognized. Moreover, the focus is on

discrete events rather than gradual buildup of stresses. This

approach can lull companies into complacency that is shattered

when an unexpected event occurs, such as the oil spill in the

Gulf of Mexico. Problems also arise from organizations’cultural

patterns and perceptions of risk (DuHadway et al. 2018). The

complex, dynamic nature of global supply chains requires con-

stant vigilance to sense potential vulnerabilities and exceptional

agility to respond to unexpected shocks. Thus, strengthening resi-

lience requires new analytical tools as well as a cultural shift.

Numerous definitions of supply chain resilience emerged from

early research, yet we noted limitations in several of them. From

an engineering perspective, resilience is the ability of an organi-

zation to return to “normal”operations (Carpenter et al. 2001);

however, in Yossi Sheffi’s work, we found many examples of

companies that learn from disruptions and shift to a stronger pos-

ture (Sheffi2005). This view of resilience aligns with the study

of ecological systems, where species can adapt to environmental

Corresponding author:

Timothy J. Pettit, Department of Management and Marketing,

National University, 11255 N. Torrey Pines Road, La Jolla, CA

92037, USA; E-mail: tpettit@nu.edu

Journal of Business Logistics, 2019, 40(1): 56–65 doi: 10.1111/jbl.12202

© 2019 Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals