Abstract
This study examines relationships between the location of supply chain disruptions (SCDs) within the supply chain, a firm’s experience with SCDs, and the disruption severity. Using organisational learning theory, we propose that an organisation’s prior experience with SCDs will reduce the negative influence of future disruptions. However, the location of disruption occurrence (internal to the firm vs. external to the firm) also plays a vital role in the severity of future disruptions. We consider two measures of SCD severity to quantify the extent of negative influence on firms: (1) the initial loss of return on assets (ROA) and (2) the total loss of ROA over time. We empirically evaluate the performance of 262 publicly traded U.S. firms that experienced an SCD. Our study shows that the influence of internal and external SCDs on firms can be different when firms do and do not have experience with similar events. More specifically, the results show that when firms have not experienced a similar event in the past, internal SCDs are associated with a higher disruption severity than are external SCDs. The results also show that prior experience significantly decreases the disruption severity suffered by firms after internal SCDs.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Additional information
Funding
Notes on contributors
Milad Baghersad
Milad Baghersad is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Information Technology and Operations Management in the College of Business at Florida Atlantic University. Dr. Baghersad received his Ph.D. in Business Information Technology from the Pamplin College of Business at Virginia Tech. His research interests include Supply Chain Management, Supply Chain Disruptions, Disaster Resilience, Machine Learning, and Data Analytics. Milad has published papers in peer-reviewed journals, including the Decision Sciences Journal, Transportation Research Part E, International Journal of Production Economics, Risk Analysis, and the Socio-Economic Planning Sciences. He currently teaches Data Mining & Predictive Analytics, and Advance Business Analytics at Florida Atlantic University.
Christopher W. Zobel
Christopher W. Zobel is the R.B. Pamplin Professor of Business Information Technology in the Pamplin College of Business at Virginia Tech. He earned a Ph.D. in Systems Engineering from the University of Virginia, an M.S. in Mathematics from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and a B.A. in Mathematics from Colgate University. Dr. Zobel’s primary research interests include disaster operations management and humanitarian supply chain resilience. He has published over 90 articles in archival journals and academic conference proceedings, and his work can be found in journal outlets such as the Journal of Operations Management, Production and Operations Management, Risk Analysis, Decision Sciences, and the International Journal of Production Research. He is currently Co-PI on several different US National Science Foundation grants that involve characterising and quantifying disaster resilience. Dr. Zobel is also one of the founding faculty members of the NSF NRT graduate programme on Disaster Resilience and Risk Management, which is located within the Center for Coastal Studies at Virginia Tech.
Paul Benjamin Lowry
Paul Benjamin Lowry, Ph.D. is an Eminent Scholar and the Suzanne Parker Thornhill Chair Professor in Business Information Technology at the Pamplin College of Business at Virginia Tech where he serves as the BIT Ph.D. and graduate programmes director. He is a former tenured Full Professor at both City University of Hong Kong and The University of Hong Kong. He received his Ph.D. in Management Information Systems from the University of Arizona and an MBA from the Marriott School of Business. He has published 250+ publications, including 140+ journal articles in the Journal of Management Information Systems (JMIS), Information Systems Research (ISR), MIS Quarterly (MISQ), Journal of the Association for Information Systems (JAIS), Information Systems Journal (ISJ), European Journal of Information Systems (EJIS), Decision Sciences Journal (DSJ), various IEEE Transactions, and others. He is on the senior editorial board of Journal of Management Information Systems (JMIS). He also is a Senior Editor (SE) at Journal of the Association for Information Systems (JAIS) and Information Systems Journal (ISJ). His research interests include (1) organisational and behavioural security and privacy; (2) online deviance, online harassment, and computer ethics; (3) HCI, social media, and gamification; and (4) business analytics, decision sciences, innovation, and supply chains.
Sutirtha Chatterjee
Sutirtha Chatterjee is an Associate Professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Suti’s research interests are information systems ethics, IT and innovation, IS disciplinary issues, mobile work, and electronic markets. His research has been published in leading outlets, such as in the Association for Information Systems (AIS) Basket of 8 Journals. His works have appeared in journals such as MIS Quarterly (MISQ), Journal of the Association for Information Systems (JAIS), Decision Sciences Journal (DSJ), Journal of Management Information Systems (JMIS), Information Systems Journal (ISJ), European Journal of Information Systems (EJIS), Journal of Strategic Information Systems (JSIS), Decision Support Systems (DSS), and Information & Management (I&M). He currently serves as a Senior Editor at JAIS and ISJ, and as an Associate Editor at DSJ. He also serves as an editorial board member at JSIS. Suti has received the best reviewer award at JAIS (2018), and the best Associate Editor award in the IS Development and Project Management Track, International Conference on Information Systems (2020).