Embracing scepticism as a non-physical form of redundancy: lessons learnt from the UK blood supply chain

Abstract

This paper seeks to understand how supply chain actors demonstrate scepticism as a non-physical form of redundancy to maintain supply chain resilience. It provides lessons learnt from three case studies of dyadic blood supply chains involving three blood centres and twelve hospitals in England. This paper identifies three key elements of scepticism, namely information duplication, warranting, and cross-evaluation. These elements act as preventive mechanisms, avoiding the unwanted consequences of routine behaviour, and averting mindless actions resulting from reactive operations. We argue that scepticism can be adopted as a complement to supply chain redundancy practices, increasing the robustness and agility of supply chain operations, and therefore enhancing supply chain resilience. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first paper to address the notion of scepticism, emphasizing the pivotal role of human behaviour in the supply chain resilience literature. Despite its specific context, the findings could potentially be applied in other industries.

Keywords:

• disruption
• scepticism
• information duplication
• warranting
• cross-evaluation
• preventive mechanism
• mindful action

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Luluk Lusiantoro

Dr Luluk Lusiantoro is a Lecturer and Coordinator of the Centre for Logistics and Supply Chain Management within the Department of Management, Faculty of Economics and Business, Universitas Gadjah Mada, Yogyakarta, Indonesia. He received his MSc and Doctorate degrees in Logistics and Supply Chain Management from Cranfield School of Management, Cranfield University, UK. His research focusses on Operations, Logistics, and Supply Chain Sustainability and Resilience in various industries. In 2015, his project in the blood supply chain with the National Health Service Blood and Transplant (NHSBT) won an MSc Dissertation of the Year from the Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport, UK. He has published his work in reputable international journals including International Journal of Operations & Production Management, International Journal of Physical Distribution & Logistics Management, and Journal of Small Business & Enterprise Development.

Nicky Yates

Dr Nicky Yates is a Senior Lecturer in Logistics and Supply Chain Management within the Cranfield Centre for Logistics, Procurement and Supply Chain Management and Director of Doctoral Programmes for Cranfield School of Management. An Engineer by training, she spent the first six years of her working life in the food industry for Unilever and subsequently Birds Eye as a Research Engineer. She has a wide general interest in many aspects of modelling the supply chain and her teaching and research are focussed in these areas, with a particular interest in the management of resilient supply chains and those which handle perishable products such as food and blood. Her research has been published in a number of internationally renowned journals. She likes nothing more than bringing an evidence driven approach through quantitative tools and supply chain principles to solve real world practical problems and has carried out projects in many sectors from healthcare to construction.