The global economy faces increasing vulnerabilities from macroeconomic disruptions, such as regulatory changes, trade tensions, geopolitical conflicts, currency volatility, pandemics, and energy crises, that undermine the resilience of operations and supply chain management (OSCM) systems. These disruptions exacerbate risks, including supply chain breakdowns, operational inefficiencies, and systemic weaknesses, with energy challenges emerging as a key concern due to their effects on production costs, inflation, and sustainability goals. Advanced technologies, such as blockchain, digital twins, generative artificial intelligence (AI), and quantum computing, offer transformative potential to enhance transparency, predictive accuracy, and decision-making agility. However, their adoption introduces inherent trade-offs, as they can lead to energy-intensive operations, cybersecurity risks, and economic burdens. To make sense of these dynamics, this paper develops a conceptual framework based on a multi-layered information system architecture that links specific disruptions to corresponding digital responses. This framework is grounded in a thorough review of both conceptual and empirical literature, along with extensive discussions among the authors. It explores how these technologies can address the risks stemming from macroeconomic disruptions while also considering their broader economic implications and challenges. It argues that simplistic solutions fail to account for the duality of these technologies' impacts and highlights the need for a systemic approach to integrate these technologies within OSCM. The paper concludes by proposing actionable research directions for OSCM scholars and managers to navigate these complexities.

Over the past two decades, since the emergence of the triple bottom line philosophy, the relationship between environmental sustainability and corporate performance has received a lot of attention, but has generated mixed or often even contradictory results. A few recent studies have inferred that innovations are the missing link that connects the environmental sustainability of a firm to other performance metrics; however, the evidence of such a proposition has been restricted to being conceptual or anecdotal. Relying on a knowledge governance approach, this study presents exploratory empirical evidence indicating that the impacts of a firm’s sustainability initiatives on its innovation performance originate from the governance mechanism it uses for sustainability, not sustainability outcomes per se. We tested this research proposition by using a subsample of Global Manufacturing Research Group’s global survey data. Our results support the positive impacts of two widely-used environmental sustainability governance mechanisms (i.e., internal monitoring and supplier collaboration) on product innovation capability. The findings further provide more useful and effective options for manufacturing firms and managers, to establish environmental sustainability governance mechanisms that can be converted into product innovation capability.

The extant sustainability literature has argued that supply chain (SC) members can gain both financial and operational benefits from a joint sustainability development (JSD) effort. However, no guidance has been provided on how SC members could collaborate on their sustainability development efforts to achieve the intended economic performance. This study addressed this research gap by proposing different contractual governances, based on a game-theoretic approach, for both manufacturer and retailer to better engage in JSD. Specifically, multiple JSD contractual arrangements regarding profit and associated cost sharing between manufacturers and retailers were defined and evaluated. Our analyses show that the manufacturer behaves opportunistically when the impact of a retailer’s effort on consumer demand is low. In other words, the retailer increases its sustainability effort, but not the manufacturer. However, such opportunistic behavior can be removed under a revenue sharing arrangement. That is, the manufacturer becomes cooperative with the retailer, and both retailer and manufacturer increase their JSD efforts. Several numerical experiments were conducted to assess the effectiveness of various revenue sharing arrangements (no sharing, partial profit sharing, and total profit sharing) in devising and implementing a mutually beneficial JSD program. Accordingly, several guidelines for the SC JSD implementation are provided.

The quantity discount contract has long been one of the most frequently employed basic supply contracts. However, we must reexamine whether this contract is still effective under supply and demand disruptions that have been frequent recently. We compare three contracts: one quantity discount contract advantageous to the supplier, one quantity discount contract advantageous to the retailer, and one wholesale price contract as a basic case for comparison. We consider various disruption characteristics, such as the occurrence and timing of disruption, and four different disruption types. We find that the quantity discount contract is not always the right choice, especially in an unexpected disruption situation, but it still performs well in not only no disruption but also long-term disruption situations. Even if a disruption occurs, the supplier can be better off through a quantity discount contract, even though the contract choice might devastate the retailer's profit and harm the supply chain's long-term health. Thus, for the profit maximization of the entire supply chain or retailer, both the internal and external business conditions need to be carefully considered. We provide in detail the conditions in terms of disruption size and loss as well as the market and production characteristics.