Food Network Resilience Against Natural Disasters
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View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE SGOXXX10.1177/2158244017717570SAGE OpenUmar et al. 717570research-article20172017 provided by Lincoln University Research Archive Article SAGE Open July-September 2017: 1 –11 Food Network Resilience Against Natural © The Author(s) 2017 https://doi.org/10.1177/2158244017717570DOI: 10.1177/2158244017717570 Disasters: A Conceptual Framework journals.sagepub.com/home/sgo Muhammad Umar1, Mark Wilson1, and Jeff Heyl1 Abstract We propose a conceptual framework that highlights the importance of logistics, collaboration, sourcing, and knowledge management in achieving supply chain resilience. This framework is developed after extensive literature review of relief supply chains, supply chain resilience, and disaster management disciplines. This review reveals that our understanding of supply chain resilience for food supply chains in a disaster scenario is still in its infancy. We note the lack of any consolidated framework or generalized theory in this area. Different topics related to resilience are usually discussed in isolation; hence, this research has attempted to combine different concepts drawn from various areas into one framework. We postulate that food supply chains can develop certain capabilities such as agility, adaptability, and alignment within the four supply chain domains of logistics, collaboration, sourcing, and knowledge management. Supply chain orientation and risk management culture plays the facilitating role in this framework. Adopting this systems approach would allow greater insights into how food supply chains can become more resilient to natural disasters. Keywords vulnerability, supply chain resilience, disaster management, food supply chain The term supply chain and the adoption of a system-wide caused by natural disasters. As consequences of natural (supply chain) view is now a generally accepted way for aca- disasters are devastating, enhancing disaster resilience of demia, specialist sectors of industry, and management pro- supply chain is necessary for all the actors of a supply fessionals to discuss and encapsulate the idea of a total chain, especially more for food supply chains when the supply system. More recently, due to number of ripple effects “end consumer” actually depends on the sustenance for of supply chain disruptions on economic activities, supply life. chain management has become a part of the everyday vocab- We note that little work has been done on the resilience of ulary of politicians, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), supply chain with a particular emphasis on food supply chain humanitarian managers, and the general public (Christopher in disaster events. Disasters all over the world, both sudden & Peck, 2004). Multiple management activities are involved onset and slow onset, have demonstrable effects on food sup- in supply chain management such as sourcing, procurement, ply chains. Less food is produced and prices rise dramati- and logistics management. Planning and execution of all cally due to shortages, thereby increasing the food security these activities is a challenging task which demands efficient concerns all over the world (Edwards et al., 2011). This is a and effective coordination of informational, relational, and major issue for developing and so-called first world coun- financial flows across the boundaries of a single organization tries alike. Hence, in this article, we intend to develop an (Ponomarov, 2012). However, every activity conducted in a integrated framework for food supply chain resilience. Our supply chain has inherent risks which can occur due to some findings will help in the general understanding of food sup- unexpected disruption. ply chain resilience and offer insights to the functions and Natural disasters are major cause of supply chain dis- capabilities that are necessary for improving resilience of ruptions which can result in major breakdowns of distribu- food supply chain. tion links and production nodes, such as the Japanese Tsunami of 2011 and its effect of the global automotive industry (Handfield, Blackhurst, Elkins, & Craighead, 2007). Managing this rapidly changing risk landscape is 1Lincoln University, New Zealand challenging and it requires that firms, people, and supply chains become more resilient (van Opstal, 2007). The term Corresponding Author: Muhammad Umar, Department of Global Value Chains & Trade, Lincoln disaster resilience can be defined as ability or capacity of University, P.O. Box 85036, Lincoln 7647, New Zealand. an organization or supply chain to absorb the disruptions Email: [email protected] Creative Commons CC BY: This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License (http://www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/) which permits any use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access pages (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage). 2 SAGE Open Literature Review started by assessing the title and abstract. Some of the arti- cles were discarded because of the repetition or essentially Method very similar coverage. The final list of articles were thus The main purpose of this research is to develop an integrated critically reviewed and important points, findings, conclu- framework for food supply chain resilience especially in the sions, and summaries are included in the final draft to iden- advent of natural disasters. Existing knowledge is always the tify research and theoretical issues, and methods in the given foundation of future rigorous research. Thus, a literature domains. Figure 1 portrays the major steps taken in this review is an important tool in generating future knowledge in methodology. a given domain. It summarizes the existing research by iden- tifying the existing patterns and issue about the intended Disaster Management and Relief Supply Chains topic (Seuring, Müller, Westhaus, & Morana, 2005). As the main topic of this study is resilience to disaster events, there- The term disaster refers to a breakdown in the normal func- fore, the discussion will focus on the disciplines of supply tioning of a community that has an adverse impact on the people of a community, their lifestyle, work, and environ- chain management and also resilience. The second important ment. This situation can be a result of natural events or man- focus of the review is “food supply chain,” in particular what made activities. Natural events typically comprise of weather sort of problems do these supply chains face and how they events, such as floods, hurricanes, biological and others such can improve and ultimately contribute toward the overall as landslides and earthquakes, and so on. Human activities community resilience. As the context is natural disaster like wars and terrorism which sometimes are referred to events, we also incorporate literature on humanitarian logis- complex emergencies often lead to mass displacement of tics and relief supply chains. people for longer terms, famine, and outflows of refugees We started the review process by searching the key words (Pan American Health Organization [PAHO], 2001). The (resilience, supply chain resilience, supply chain risk, and World Economic Forum found that around 250 million peo- resilience) on Google scholar. Initial target was to find out ple are affected by natural disasters every year (Howell, the renowned work in this field. We found that most of the 2013). However, only 3% of relief activities are devoted to work on this topic started after the Cranfield investigation on natural disasters (Van Wassenhove, 2006). Therefore, more this topic supply chain resilience and vulnerability (Peck attention needs to be focused toward natural disasters. There et al., 2003). Second, we observed that there has been an are two main streams of disaster relief: continuous aid work increasing trend in number of studies on resilience from and sudden disaster relief (Thomas & Kopczak, 2005). Our 2008 to 2012. We also scrutinized the resilience concept and proposed research framework will focus only on natural noted resilience is related to events that have a low probabil- disasters, especially, sudden onset disasters (earthquakes and ity but a high impact, in contrast to risk management litera- floods) due to its effect on local food production and distri- ture that seeks to manage events with a high probability but bution chains. a low impact (Sheffi & Rice, 2005). These high impact “Disaster management” is a discipline of avoiding risks events are often related to natural and man-made disasters. before impact of disaster and dealing with risks once disaster We also found that during disasters, food is one of the most has happened. No country or community is immune to the essential elements for relief, with immediate need. Therefore, adverse impacts of disasters. However, disasters can be pre- food supply chains are very important for over all relief of pared for, responded to, and recovered from, and their conse- the victims and community. We extended our search with quences can be mitigated (Haddow, Bullock, & Coppola, related key words for disaster and food supply chain (disaster 2007). Specific phases of disaster management life cycle management, relief supply chains, food supply chain, food vary from research to research. The United Nations supply chain resilience) and focused on the most cited work. Department of Humanitarian