REGULATORY DISRUPTION RISKS FACING SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT

Supply chain uncertainty, risk and disruption have emerged in the last decade as an important avenue for research. Changes in regulation related to trade, business, environment, health and safety, security, and fiscal policy... [ view full abstract ]

Supply chain uncertainty, risk and disruption have emerged in the last decade as an important avenue for research. Changes in regulation related to trade, business, environment, health and safety, security, and fiscal policy have become sources of risk for businesses operating globally. In-spite of being labelled as an indirect risk, regulation change seems to be one of the major causes of disruption for many supply chains today. Even if they do not immediately impact supply chains- given the nature of regulation change, they still can cause organizations to rethink their supply chain policies for the short as well as the long term. Given the importance of regulatory uncertainty, risk and disruption, one would expect to find structured research that clearly defines and demarcates them from other uncertainties, risk and disruption. However this is not the case. Our paper tries to lay down some ground work in what constitutes regulatory risk through a review of literature and its analysis using a thematic and longitudinal perspective. It was found that there are certain classification structures that are prevalent across literature for regulatory risk- however, further work is required to understand the effects of regulation change on supply chains. A gap was also identified with respect to the methodologies used in research that covers regulatory risk and more longitudinal studies have been proposed.