Supply chain risk management strategies in the face of COVID-19

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic devastated businesses worldwide and the global economy contracted as companies grappled with shocks to demand and supply. The purpose of this research is to understand the impact of COVID-19 in industries, identify risk management strategies employed by companies, and recommend methods businesses may consider in selecting suitable strategies to combat future pandemic risks. Ten companies across five industries globally were studied, from which eleven distinct strategies in managing COVID-19 disruptions were identified. Our results suggest that there was no universal risk management strategy against COVID-19 that could have been employed by any company, nor was there a strategy unique to a single industry. It was observed that each company employed more than one strategy towards the COVID-19 pandemic disruption, but establishing partnerships was the most frequently employed strategy. Finally, we propose two contingency and typology frameworks, namely the Shock-Responsiveness Framework and Effort-Impact Framework, to aid companies in determining suitable types of risk management strategies to minimise the impact of future pandemic risks.