Organizational Communication and Individual Behavior: Implications for Supply Chain Risk Management

Abstract

Risk is a significant issue for supply chain managers. Not only must they contend with multiple dimensions of risk in decision‐making, they must reconcile decision‐making with broader organizational interests. This study examines the influence of organizational communication regarding supply chain risk on individual decision‐making strategies and the perceptions of risk. A multi‐stage experimental design is applied, in which decision‐makers make decisions across three dimensions of risk and adjust their risk‐taking behavior after being presented with organizational communication regarding supply chain risk levels. The relationship between organizational communication and the perceptions of supply chain risk is then explored after decision‐makers are allowed to adjust their supply chain strategies. The results suggest that decision‐makers adapt sourcing strategies in response to organizational communication regarding supply chain risk. Specifically, they make riskier decisions when the organization communicates improvements in supply chain risk levels. However, when given specific instructions to reduce risk, they do not adjust their supply chain strategies.

Deviations from aspirational target levels and environmental and safety performance: Implications for operations managers acting irresponsibly

“…These far‐from‐trivial assumptions, our results, and the similar results of others all suggest that while PT and the BTF share similarities they are aimed at fundamentally different levels of analysis and that what holds for individuals may not hold for organizations (e.g., Bromiley, Miller, & Rau, ; DuHadway et al, ). When studying group‐ or firm‐level decision‐making, we suggest that the BTF is a better choice.…”

“…This is an easy suggestion to make, but the reality is that future research will have trouble addressing how operations managers make decisions about irresponsible behavior using primary data. One path for future research could be to build on DuHadway, Carnovale, and Kannan () to explore other risky, but legal, actions for indirect insight into irresponsible behavior. Experimental research, especially scenario‐based research might also be able to offer insights into how doing well, especially relative to competitors, influences decision‐making.…”

The Evolution of Resilience in Supply Chain Management: A Retrospective on Ensuring Supply Chain Resilience

“…Problems also arise from organizations’ cultural patterns and perceptions of risk (DuHadway et al. ). The complex, dynamic nature of global supply chains requires constant vigilance to sense potential vulnerabilities and exceptional agility to respond to unexpected shocks.…”

The rippled newsvendor: A new inventory framework for modeling supply chain risk severity in the presence of risk propagation

“…However, how would our model change when the manager's preference is to craft policy based on expected cost of disruption rather than number of events? Even if we were to remain in the severity framework of study, another important consideration to take into account is the manager's risk preference and response (DuHadway et al, 2018).…”

“…First, supply chain risk management is an inherently subjective process, since what one may consider "risky", another may not. This is due to the firm's perception of the environment within which they operate (Ellis et al, 2011;DuHadway et al, 2018;. It can equally be argued that "risk" is measured in various ways, many of which are dependent on the decision maker's preferences and perceptions (Garvey et al, 2015;Zsidisin and Ritchie, 2009).…”