Organizations are increasingly subject to many types of disruptions and catastrophes, with little or no predictability, and with increasing frequency and high impact. In response to these, organizational risk management has been pursued broadly in two different ways. One approach has been to adopt procedures like business continuity management (BCM), enterprise risk management (ERM), and related approaches. On the other hand, operations management and supply chain professionals have focused their efforts on cultivating various types of flexibility, agility, and resilience to cope with increasingly volatile business conditions. The first set of approaches has tended to be more structured, reflected by the emergence of standards like ISO 22301. Currently, there is a critical need to reconcile and synthesize both approaches, which forms the main objective of this paper. We first provide a summary of BCM methods, followed by a description of the disparate risk management attempts of supply chain professionals. A framework for business continuity management for supply chain risk management is developed based on the structure provided by ISO 22301, and drawing on the strengths of both approaches.

This paper analyzes the impacts of China’s Green Fence and National Sword Programs, under which strict contamination limits were imposed on recyclable materials, besides prohibiting imports of low quality recyclables. Specifically, this study investigates the impacts of this policy on landfills, and the risks to the U.S. plastics secondary materials market and material recovery facilities (MRFs). A hierarchical regression analysis reveals the significant impacts of China’s Green Fence and National Sword polices on the amount landfilled plastic. Controlling for oil prices, producer price index (PPI), and amount of plastic scrap exported, our findings show that the Green Fence had no statistically significant impact on the amount of plastic landfilled in the U.S. However, the quantity of plastic landfilled in the U.S. increased by 23.2% following the implementation of National Sword. Furthermore, analysis of the annual reports submitted by registered MRFs in New York (NY) state reveals that the total amount of plastic recovered by them has decreased. We suggest that demand creation and investments that improve the quality of bales are needed to help solve this economic dilemma.

Purpose: This study investigates supply chain management (SCM) practices in a specific fast fashion apparel (FFA) industry. The impacts of SCM practices on competitive advantage (CA) are investigated via mediating roles of supply chain agility (SCA) and partnership quality (PQ). Resource advantage (R-A) theory, in addition to resource-based view (RBV) and dynamic capability theories, is used as theoretical underpinning.Design/methodology/approach: A mixed-method approach is adopted: a qualitative field study and survey research. Data from 296 apparel manufacturers in Bangladesh are analyzed using the partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) approach, involving reflective and formative, first- and second-order constructs and mediation tests using the Hayes PROCESS macro.Findings: Both SCM practices and PQ significantly affect SCA. SCM practices are found to directly enhance CA, but, counterintuitively, only marginally. Only through mediations of SCA and PQ do SCM practices enhance CA significantly. This is a departure from past research that has postulated direct effects between SCM practices and CA.Research limitations/implications: This research is confined to the FFA industry and one national setting, Bangladesh. The data analyzed is also cross-sectional, with customary limitations on the temporal dimension.Practical implications: SCM practices contribute to CA, but only through the mediation of PQ and SCA. This is an important directive to practitioners. Also, the second-order reflective measures for each construct indicate the specific SCM practices needed to maximize CA.Originality/value: This study contributes to the literature on SCM practices in FFA industry, specifically the mediating roles of PQ and SCA, resulting in new, more nuanced findings that are important in dynamic business settings, driven by new theoretical perspectives incorporating R-A theory, which has hardly been utilized before in SCM research.