Discontinuous Wefts: Weaving a More Interconnected Supply Chain Management Tapestry

Abstract

The COVID-19 crisis quickly drew attention to shortages of critical supplies in complex, global healthcare, and food supply chains, despite emergency and pandemic plans existing in many countries. Borders and factories closed through lockdowns and slowly reopened under different working arrangements, causing supply chains to struggle to respond to this global crisis, with severe impact on GDPs internationally. Ironically, despite global communications technologies, global political structures, and the immense capability of humans, the only true global actor in this crisis is a virus, one of the simplest, most dependent forms of life. Supply chain management research and practice contains threads of knowledge and understanding that are vital to mitigation, preparedness, response, and recovery in global crises; we just have not woven them together yet. This essay proposes a more interconnected approach to supply chain management to tackle these current and future global crises, weaving together understanding of supply markets, public procurement, humanitarian aid supply chain management, network and systems thinking, and global stewardship, with the more traditional conceptualizations of firm-based supply chain management. Questions are posed to illustrate current discontinuous wefts of knowledge to explore how weaving a more interconnected, systems thinking-based approach to supply chain management might stimulate research to support coordination of future global supply preparedness.