Achieving resilience through knowledge management practices and risk management culture in agri-food supply chains

PurposeGiven the increasingly turbulent business landscape and unprecedented incidents (e.g. Covid-19), firms must achieve supply chain resilience (SCRes) as a dynamic capability to bounce back from adversities and ensure continuity of operations. The purpose of this study is to integrate the three interrelated [knowledge management, risk management culture (RMC) and resilience] but often separately discussed concepts to advance the understanding of their intertwined influence on SCRes in the agri-food supply chains.Design/methodology/approachThis study uses a cross-sectional survey approach where quantitative data is collected from 349 participants from the Australian agri-food supply chains to test the proposed hypotheses.FindingsExposure to supply chain risks triggers the deployment of specific knowledge management practices in the agri-food supply chains. Further, the analysis on serial mediation suggests that firms' knowledge management practices work sequentially (knowledge acquisition, assimilation and application) and develop a RMC to achieve SCRes amid supply chain risks.Practical implicationsThe findings of this study inform practitioners and policymakers who seek to understand the key mechanisms that facilitate the development of SCRes when facing supply chain risks, particularly in the Australian agri-food supply chains.Social implicationsThe growth of the food industry through more resilient food supply chains could ensure sustained food supply and more employment opportunities.Originality/valueUsing dynamic capability theory, the authors devise a novel empirical model that explicates how knowledge management practices and RMC instigate the dynamic capability of SCRes amid supply chain risks facing agri-food supply chains.

Guest editorial: Deepening the theoretical understanding of agility and resilience in global supply chains

Specifically, they address the following broad topics: the role of organizational intangible resources in facilitating supply chain resilience, the application of resilience to service recovery, the long-term view of supply chain resilience, the multifaceted effect of supply base complexity on supply chain agility and resilience, and the application of agility to improve customer performance. Using a cross-sectional questionnaire, the authors collected data from 180 medium-to senior-level managers and found that organizational learning has a positive impact on supply chain resilience, while organizational innovativeness and organizational agility mediate this relationship. To illustrate, the value of returns in the USA amounted to $400 bn in 2020 (National Retail Federation, 2021). [...]a recent customer survey by United Parcel Service showed that about 58% of consumers are not satisfied with the service they encounter when returning products to retailers (Warren, 2020). Furthermore, in keeping with the focus of the special issue on the theoretical underpinnings of supply chain resilience, the authors draw on procedural justice theory to also explore the mediating roles of procedural justice (i.e. the policies and procedures used to offer the desired customer outcome) and interactional justice (i.e. the customer's interpersonal treatment during service recovery) in the relationship between service recovery resilience on the one hand and customer satisfaction and customer loyalty on the other.