Carlos Mena

This research introduces the concept of relational resilience, which reflects the dynamic capacity of a buyer–supplier relationship to absorb external shocks and continue its core function of exchange. Guided by structural inertia theory (SIT), the research explores how relationship age, exchange volume, and multiplexity contribute to relational resilience across both stable periods and times of extreme disruption. Using a large‐scale panel dataset of buyer–supplier relationships and the COVID‐19 pandemic as an exogenous shock, the findings reveal that relational resilience is enhanced by all three mechanisms, but extreme disruptions lessen the protective value of relationship age and exchange volume while strengthening multiplexity's impact on relational resilience. These findings contribute to supply chain resilience theory by introducing a relational perspective of resilience and integrating SIT to identify structural qualities that promote or constrain adaptation. This study also extends SIT by emphasizing the velocity of environmental change as an important contextual factor that rebalances the competing influences of efficiency and structural inertia in supply chain relationships. These extensions offer valuable insights for managing relational dynamics and resilience in buyer–supplier relationships.

Purpose: Large-scale disruptions that lead to extreme environmental uncertainty, combined with perceived threats and time pressure, have prompted some organizations to rapidly form new networks. This research aims to focus on how actors in these newly formed networks leverage their agile capabilities in response to extreme disruptions.Design/methodology/approach: Grounded in the agility literature, this study employs an abductive research approach and a multi-case design. Data were collected from 18 actors embedded in four newly formed networks located in the United Kingdom, Italy, Colombia and the USA.Findings: Through six propositions and an empirically derived model of supply chain agility under extreme uncertainty, the findings reveal a dynamic interplay among agile capabilities. They also illustrate how the utilization of these capabilities shifts in environments characterized by severe unpredictability.Practical implications: The research underscores the importance of allocating equal attention to both cognitive and physical dimensions of agility. Under conditions of extreme uncertainty, firms may need to adopt more entrepreneurial behaviors to enhance agility; however, this can increase risk exposure, which must be managed proactively.Originality/value: This study contributes to the body of knowledge on supply chain agility by identifying the interrelationships between agility dimensions and demonstrating how extreme uncertainty influences their practical application.

Big data and computational technologies are increasingly important worldwide in asset and investment management. Many investment management firms are adopting these data science methods and technologies to improve performance across all investment processes. A good question is whether we can make better decisions in developing quantitative strategies. Therefore, the main objective of this research was to develop a multi-criteria assessment framework and scoring decision support system to evaluate quantitative investment strategies that apply machine learning and data science techniques in their research and development. Subject matter experts will assess all framework perspectives from a systematic literature review to approve their reliability. The perspectives consist of economic and financial foundations, data perspective, features perspective, modeling perspective, and performance perspective. The research methodology applied was the Hierarchical Decision Model (HDM) to provide a 360-degree view of the quantitative investment strategy and improve and generalize the concept to other asset classes and regions. This study accomplished a rigorous integration of an extensive literature review connecting data science (DS), machine learning (ML), and investment decision-making in developing quantitative investment strategies. As a result, the major contribution of this study is the comprehensive examination which included identifying and quantifying perspectives and criteria. The results, while limited indicated significant gaps in strategies examined therefore generated critical knowledge to improve ML/DS-driven investment strategies which are valuable for financial companies, and policymakers.

Disasters affect hundreds of millions of people every year and the response of governments is crucial in alleviating the suffering of those affected. Despite the importance of contracting in response to disasters, research on this topic is conspicuous by its absence. This paper begins to address this gap by investigating the choice of procurement contract type by US federal agencies during disaster management operations. The research relies on 47,560 contracts issued by the US federal government in response to 14 major disasters between 2005 and 2016. We build on agency theory to investigate the choice of the contract type made by federal agencies at the different stages of a relief operation. This research provides empirical evidence of the key factors underpinning the choice of contract in the context of disaster management, namely the amount of spend per contract and the type of acquisition (product or service), and reveals the moderating role of the stage of the relief operation.

Purpose: This pathway paper offers research guidance for investigating illegal supply chains as they increasingly threaten societies, economies and ecosystems. There are implications for policy makers to consider incorporating supply chain expertise.Design/methodology/approach: The authors’ work is informed by the team's previous and ongoing studies, research from fields such as criminology, investigative journalism and legal documents.Findings: Illegality occurs in many supply chains and consists in multiple forms. Certain sectors, supply chain innovations, longer supply chains, and heterogeneous regulations and enforcement exacerbate illegal activities. But illegal activity may be necessary for humanitarian, religious or nationalistic reasons. These areas are under explored by supply chain researchers.Research limitations/implications: By encouraging supply chain academics to research in this area as well as form collaborative partnerships outside of the discipline, the authors hope to move the field forward in prevention as well as learning from illegal supply chains.Practical implications: Practitioners seek to prevent issues like counterfeiting with their products as well as fraud for economic and reputational reasons.Social implications: Governments strive to minimise impacts on their economies and people, and both governments and NGOs attempt to minimise the negative social and environmental impacts. Policy makers need supply chain researchers to evaluate new laws to prevent enabling illegality in supply chains.Originality/value: As an under-explored area, the authors suggest pathways such as partnering with other disciplines, exploring why these supply chains occur, considering other data sources and methodologies to interdict illegality and learning from illegal supply chains to improve legal supply chains.

The COVID‐19 pandemic resulted in severe supply disruptions and revenue losses, especially for buyers highly dependent on foreign suppliers. Unsurprisingly, scholars and industry experts claim that high dependence on any exchange partner is detrimental to buyers. The literature, however, is ambivalent about whether supply base concentration—the number of sources in a firm's supply base and the degree of importance of each source—benefits or harms buyers. Our study addresses this ambivalence by investigating whether supply base concentration, conceptualized as supplier concentration, supplier country concentration, and carrier concentration, worsens or mitigates the impact of supply disruptions as they unfold over time. We use longitudinal data from ocean bills of lading to examine these relationships in the context of U.S. buyers importing apparel during the COVID‐19 pandemic. Our results show that higher pre‐disruption supplier concentration and supplier country concentration helped buyers mitigate the impact of supply disruptions related to COVID‐19, with diminishing effects once supplier and supplier country concentration exceeded specific inflection points. Conversely, higher pre‐disruption carrier diversification helped buyers mitigate the impact of supply disruptions related to COVID‐19. Notably, these effects depend on the specific phase of the supply disruption. We discuss implications for research and practice.

Purpose: Disasters are growing in frequency and scale, unmasking the systemic vulnerabilities of modern supply chains and highlighting the need to understand how to respond to such events. In the context of an extreme event such as the COVID-19 pandemic, this research focuses on how networks of organizations leverage their combined resources and capabilities to develop, manufacture and deliver new products outside their traditional markets.Design/methodology/approach: Following a theory elaboration process, the authors build on resource orchestration theory to develop data collection and analysis protocols to support a multi-case study research design. This research investigates four cases of newly formed networks that emerged in four different countries – Colombia, Italy, the United States and the United Kingdom–in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.Findings: These four networks in the investigation share common characteristics in terms of motivation and approach, creating patterns from which theoretical generalizations are developed into a series of propositions regarding the process of network-level resource orchestration under extreme uncertainty.Practical implications: The research shows how networks and the organizations within them can streamline processes, swiftly build new relationships and develop a balanced risk management approach to extreme uncertainty.Originality/value: This research contributes to theory by extending the resource orchestration model to a network level and showing how extreme uncertainty can lead to the emergence of networks and alter the motivations and goals of the member organizations, allowing them to be more responsive.

Purpose: This study investigates the role of national culture on the implementation and effectiveness of quality management practices. Specifically, the authors examine the dual roles of two of Hofstede's national culture dimensions (individualism and indulgence) in driving the implementation of people management practices and in moderating the relationship between people management and product quality performance.Design/methodology/approach: The authors’ dataset combines a survey of 976 firms from 22 countries with Hofstede's national culture index. A multi-level analysis, at firm and country levels, is used for investigating the interplay between two dimensions of national culture (individualism and indulgence) on people management practices and product quality performance.Findings: The authors' findings show the negative relationship between indulgence (at country level) and people management practices (at firm level) while individualism (at country level) strengthens the relationship between people management and product quality performance (at firm level). Furthermore, the finding shows that the joint interaction between individualism and indulgence (at country level) moderates the relationship between people management and product quality performance (at firm level) where the relationship is strongest when individualism is high and indulgence is low.Practical implications: Understanding the interplay between national culture and management practices is important for managers in making decisions on the practices managers should implement under different cultural contexts to gain the expected outcomes.Originality/value: The authors' results challenge the universalist view that suggests that quality management practices (in this case people management practices) can be applied in any context effectively to achieve high product quality performance by showing that facets of national culture influence the implementation and effectiveness of people management practices and performance. The results also provide a fresh perspective on the role of indulgence, given that it is the newest dimension in Hofstede's framework. The authors also extend previous studies which commonly only examine the main and not interactive effects of different dimensions of national culture.