Book Review: Supply Chain Risk - A Handbook of Assessment, Managment and Performance

A comment on a a previous book review – Supply Chain Risk Managament by Donald Waters – prompted me to write this review on a new book on supply chain risk which adresses the commenters concern, namely the lack of scientific or academic usefulness. Where Donald Water’s book was written with the manager in mind, this book - Supply Chain Risk – A Handbook of Assessment, Managment and Performance – by George Zsidisin and Bob Ritchie, is a collection of contributions from established and not so established, renown and well-known scholars and practicioners.

ISCRIM

The primary purpose of this book is to collect and share various streams of research and trends in supply chain risk, predominantly from the ISCRIM (International Supply Chain Risk Management) network. In fact, this is the second collection of articles. The first book, Supply Chain Risk by Claire Brindley, delivered the first dichotomy of supply chain risk and its research strands. Some concepts have already been published in various journals, but many of the perspectives are new, which makes this book both entertaining and educating at the same time. Thirty authors have contributed to this book, thirty authors who are recognized authorities in the field of Supply Chain Risk.

Four sections

The handbook reflects the main issues of Supply Chain Risk Management (SCRM) in its very structure and is divided into four parts:

• Risk Analysis, Assessment and Tools
• Supply Chain Design and Risk
• Supply Chain Risk Management
• Supply Chain Security

From the outside this may look as a given and rigid framework. It is not. Along these lines, each author explores different concepts and models, based on their particular research, thus allowing the reader to find a concept that suits the readers circumstances rather than forcing a framework upon the reader.

Risk Analysis Assessment and Tools

The first section incorporates differentmodels and approaches, among which we find Asbjørnslett, who has refined his early work on assessing the vulnerability of production systems, already reviewed on this blog, to fit the context of supply chains.

Supply Chain Design and Risk

This section focuses on how organizations can shape their supply chains in order to address and mitigate the inherent risks that lie in all supply chains, including the works of Martin Christopher and Brian Tomlin.

Supply Chain Risk Managemnent

The third section looks more at general management approaches, particularly suited for Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises (SMEs). Here we find Bob Ritchie and Claire Brindley, but also Stephan Wagner and Christoph Bode.

Supply Chain Security

This is not a new field, but it is only recently that is has entered the academic realm and is mainly concerned with intentional actions of parties to disrupt the flows of supply chains or to interfere with the quality of products and services.

Literature

Finally, I must mention that each contribution is a treasure chest of references, many of which will already be known to most researchers, but some will always be new. For this alone I recommend buying this book. Pricy? Yes, but so much worth it.

Reference

Zsidisin, G. A., & Ritchie, B. (Eds.). (2008). Supply Chain Risk: A Handbook of Assessment, Management and Performance. New York, NY: Springer. DOI: 10.1007/978-0-387-79934-6

Links

• uclan.ac.uk: Professor Bob Ritchie
• bgsu.edu: Professor George Zsidisin