Decision making in supply risk and supply disruption management

The research questions addressed in the course of this dissertation revolve around important issues of decision making in supply risk and supply disruption management. These issues have received only limited research attention and benefit from novel insights to improve our understanding of how supply risks and disruptions can effectively be addressed. In the extant literature on supply risks and disruptions, there is an agreement that supply disruptions follow a typical profile with regard to their impact on firm performance over time (Sheffi, 2005). In case that a supply risk materializes, a subsequent supply disruption leads to a sudden drop in operating performance. This disturbance causes firms to initiate recovery efforts to return to normal performance levels. In particular, the first research question explores why some managers act proactively to mitigate the potential loss from future supply disruptions while others do not. The second research question aims to shed light on how prior engagement in corporate social responsibility (CSR) affects negative stakeholder reactions to a materialized CSR-related risk. Finally, the third research question addresses the issue of how quickly decision makers should and do actually initiate recovery efforts after their firm has been hit by a supply disruption. Each of these research questions was approached by means of carefully designed and executed experiments to enable a controlled test of the relationships investigated