Striking a balance between supply chain resilience and supply chain vulnerability in the cross-border e-commerce supply chain

Abstract

This study aims to explore how cross-border e-commerce (CBEC) enterprises achieve a desired balance state of supply chain resilience and vulnerability. This study proposes the concept of the balance state of supply chain resilience and vulnerability, which refers to the proximity of the current balance state of the supply chain to the ideal one and the anti-ideal one. To evaluate the balance state, a model is constructed using the integrating fuzzy Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) and the fuzzy Technique for Order of Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) methods, which holistically consider the drivers of the resilience and vulnerability of the cross-border e-commerce supply chain (CBECSC). An empirical study is included in this paper to demonstrate how the proposed model works. The empirical results suggest that the CBECSC should maintain resilience and vulnerability in an appropriate balance state instead of pursuing either (high) resilience or (low) vulnerability without considering the other.