a b s t r a c tIncreasingly, scholars recognize the importance of understanding supply network disruptions. However, the literature still lacks a clear conceptualization of a network-level understanding of supply disruptions. Not having a network level understanding of supply disruptions prevents firms from fully mitigating the negative effects of a supply disruption. Graph theory helps to conceptualize a supply network and differentiate between disruptions at the node/arc level vs. network level. The structure of a supply network consists of a collection of nodes (facilities) and the connecting arcs (transportation). From this perspective, small events that disrupt a node or arc in the network can have major consequences for the network. A failure in a node or arc can potentially stop the flow of material across network. This study conceptualizes supply network disruption and resilience by examining the structural relationships among entities in the network. We compare four fundamental supply network structures to help understand supply network disruption and resilience. The analysis shows that node/arc-level disruptions do not necessarily lead to network-level disruptions, and demonstrates the importance of differentiating a node/arc disruption vs. a network disruption. The results also indicate that network structure significantly determines the likelihood of disruption. In general, different structural relationships among network entities have different levels of resilience. More specifically, resilience improves when the structural relationships in a network follow the power-law. This paper not only offers a new perspective of supply network disruption, but also suggests a useful analytical approach to assessing supply network structures for resilience.

Operations Management and Supply Chain Management (OM/SCM), as a discipline, can benefit from proper theorizing to address persistent urgings for better and new theories. This paper hopes to inspire more theorizing engagements through the formal process of metaphorical transfer. Metaphorical transfer transforms casually‐invoked metaphors in everyday language into theory‐constitutive metaphors. This transformation process first mandates theorizing to ensure equivalence between the domain of the metaphor and that of a target phenomenon or research problem of interest. Second, theorizing during metaphorical transfer occurs when abstracted insights intended to govern both the metaphor and target phenomenon materialize. Finally, metaphorical transfer supports borrowing of theories from outside of OM/SCM for testing within OM/SCM by safeguarding against common mistakes. This paper demonstrates metaphorical transfer via the example of divorce and strategic buyer–supplier relationship dissolution and concludes by highlighting other metaphors that may be invoked for a number of exemplary supply chain relationship phenomena.

The topic of buyer–supplier relationships has attracted much attention in the extant supply chain management literature, often from a buyer's perspective. But recently, a number of studies have begun to take a dyadic perspective, acknowledging that both parties in a buyer–supplier relationship may possess divergent perspectives on many issues. Unlike existing dyadic‐view studies that have examined perceptual differences in general, we extend this dyadic‐view stream of the literature and examine perceptual differences in the face of an impending supply disruption event. Using a scenario‐based experiment, our results suggest that suppliers seem to have a greater expectation of both buyer opportunism and relationship continuance than what the buyers actually reported. Our results also indicate that the supplier seems to underestimate the influence of relational norms on relationship continuance more so than the buyer. Also, our results indicate that there is no significant difference between the supplier's and buyer's perceptions of the impact of buyer dependence on opportunism. Our findings suggest that both members of an exchange relationship should carefully manage the expectations and norms with their counterparts, particularly when the relationship might be strained by a supply disruption.

How and why is the association between historical supplier performance and strategic relationship dissolution moderated by an unintentional but serious supplier error? Adopting Assimilation-Contrast Theory, we propose that this moderation effect can be either negative or positive. As an empirical test, we collected and analyzed data from 256 sourcing professionals participating in a scenario-based role-playing experiment. After confirming experimental checks, we fitted a general linear mixed effects model to the data with appropriate controls. We find, ceteris paribus, that a critical-component supplier with stellar historical performance is less likely to be terminated by the manufacturer than one with marginally-acceptable historical performance. However, when a critical-component supplier with stellar historical performance errs, its likelihood of being terminated by the manufacturer increases by a greater extent than when a supplier with marginally-acceptable historical performance commits the same mistake. This positive supplier performance penalty effect contributes to the buyer-supplier relationship dissolution literature by identifying how and why the deterrence to relationship dissolution typically engendered by stellar historical supplier performance does not hold. Our results have implications for how manufacturers should evaluate critical-component suppliers and how critical-component suppliers should manage ongoing strategic relationships with manufacturers.