An examination of global supply chain security through the lens of grid and group theory

Abstract

World events such as the September 11, 2001, terrorist attack, the Boston Marathon bombing, and more recently the horrifi c actions of Boko Haram in Nigeriahave put safety and security as top priorities for all people, especially those whose job it is to secure the global supply chain. It is a known fact that obtaining absolute security in any endeavor, let alone the global supply chain, is a chimera. However, security managers endeavor to minimize risks in the daily business of transportation. Confl icting values and organizational inequalities are factors that can severely undermine global supply chain processes. Thus, important issues in risk managementconcern how individuals and institutions understand, experience, and make choices in reference to certain real or perceived threats. In this chapter, we posit that grid and group theory can be a useful tool to gain insight in confl icting values of risk and the consequences of these confl icting values for supply chain processes.