Blind?

In hindsight, I should have known better, I’ve come across the scholars from the Copenhagen Business School more than once, but it never occurred to me search their website? Stupid is as stupid does.

Solid work

I am very much impressed with this extensive literature study on risk and uncertainty within Supply Chain Management. It is – by my judgement – better than Vanany et al. (2009). In fact, Sørensen lists 136 articles, compared to Vanany et al.’s only 82 articles, and that’s 5 years later. That said, Vanany et al. do not investigate much earlier than 2000, while Sørensen goes as far back as 1970. And needless to say, Sørensen is a member of ISCRIM.

The classification scheme

Sørensen looks at 23 journals in 3 types of journals:

• Supply Chain Management/Logistics
  • 10 journals
• Operations Management
  • 4 journals
• Management
  • 9 journals

The articles are classified according to orientation:

• Supply
• Internal
• Demand
• Network

and strategic level

• Strategy
• Operational

and the explicit use of theory/framework is listed as well. For each group of journals the common themes in the articles are determined:

• Supply Chain Management/Logistics (36 articles)
  • Improving Techniques for Operations
  • Risk Management
  • Securing the Supply Chain
  • Supply Management
  • Vulnerability in Physical Flows
• Operations Management (44 articles)
  • Improving Techniques for Operations
  • Risk Management
  • Supply Management
• Management (43 articles)
  • Improving Techniques for Operations
  • Risk Management
  • Risk Preference
• Cross-database (13 articles)
  • Improving Techniques for Operations
  • Risk Management
  • Risk Preference
  • Securing the Supply Chain
  • Supply Chain Design
  • Supply Management
  • Vulnerability in Physical Flows

The listings are very structured and there’s a lot work that has gone into it, I can tell that much…impressive, to say the least. For example, here’s the list of SCM/Logistics journals:

The findings

Interestingly, so Sørensen says, the literature study reveals an absence of Risk Management within Supply Chain Management. Despite many efforts related to minimizing uncertainty, and assessing the vulnerability of the market and the internal operations, apparently risk has not been perceived as a parameter for supply chain design. Really? Personally, I beg to differ here. That was 2004 and now is 2009. Risk Management is now increasingly becoming an integral part of Supply Chain Management, at least I hope so. That said, most SCM textbooks still omit any mentioning of supply chain risk or only deal with it on a cursory level, so there’s still a long way to go.

Conclusion

This is the first time I have seen such an extensive literature study on risk in supply chain management. While the articles as such are not reviewed, the classification alone provides a solid framework for further analysis and research. Not only that, I’ve been made aware of journals and articles I never heard about before, and that has added a lot to my own research, and has added even more articles to my never ending literature review of supply chain risk.

Reference

Bøge Sørensen, Lars (2004) How risk and uncertainty is used in Supply Chain Management: a literature study. Working paper 2004-02. Copenhagen: Copenhagen Business School. Available online at http://hdl.handle.net/10398/6296, last accessed: 2009/11/08

Download

• cbs.dk: How risk and uncertainty is used in Supply Chain Management: a literature study

Author link

• linkedin.com: Lars Bøge Sørensen

Related

• husdal.com: Supply Chain Risk Management: Literature Review and Future Research (Vanany et al., 2009)