2020/11/21 by Andreas Wieland · 6 citations
Business, Management and Accounting · #Innovation and Socioeconomic Development #Sustainable Supply Chain Management #Supply Chain Resilience and Risk Management
paper · doi:10.1111/jscm.12248
openalex publication_date 2020/11/21 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/29
Most of the theories that have dominated supply chain management (SCM) take a reductionist and static view on the supply chain and its management, promoting a global hunt for cheap labor and resources. As a result, supply chains tend to be operated without much concern for their broader contextual environment. This perspective overlooks that supply chains have become both vulnerable and harmful systems. Recent and ongoing crises have emphasized that the structures and processes of supply chains are fluid and interwoven with political‐economic and planetary phenomena. Building on panarchy theory, this article reinterprets the supply chain as a social–ecological system and leaves behind a modernist view of SCM, replacing it with a more contemporary vision of “dancing the supply chain.” A panarchy is a structure of adaptive cycles that are linked across different levels on scales of time, space, and meaning. It represents the world’s complexities more effectively than reductionist and static theories ever could, providing the basis for transformative SCM.