The dynamics of vulnerabilities and capabilities in improving resilience within Malaysian construction supply chain

Abstract

Purpose The dynamics and effects of interconnected risks among construction organisations tend to be overlooked across the Malaysian public project supply chains, making them highly vulnerable to supply chain disruptions. This study aims to investigate this dynamism by assessing the supply chain’s critical vulnerabilities and capabilities that formulate the level of resilience in handling disruptive events in construction projects. Design/methodology/approach A comprehensive questionnaire survey was conducted with 105 construction professionals from two groups of respondents, the public and private organisations that work in public projects to identify their current vulnerabilities and capabilities. Data were analysed and compared using the Mann–Whitney U and Kruskal–Wallis tests. Findings The findings revealed that the top five critical vulnerability factors of the supply chain include political or regulatory changes, market pressures, management, financial and strategic vulnerability. Further comparisons highlighted that the public organisations faced significantly higher political threats compared to the private organisations whilst the private organisations faced significant market pressures. The survey also shows that despite the private organisations’ high capability in financial strength, the public organisations’ financial vulnerability has destabilised the entire supply chain. Originality/value This study presents the construction supply chain’s vulnerabilities in a layered framework approach that can provide managers a new perspective on the dynamics of the cascading impacts of these vulnerabilities when observed through several layers of supply chains.

A Conceptual Framework to Manage Resilience and Increase Sustainability in the Supply Chain

“…Proactive strategies are associated with the contingency planning element. Their connection with the supply chain risk building block allows, through the disruptive environment awareness element, to foresee the possibilities of the occurrence of an event and its possible effects [33,46,170]. This activates the capability for prevention with contingency planning considering the process and strategic objectives of the entire supply chain (strategic alignment) and the implementation of proactive strategies to eliminate or reduce the impacts that it may generate [31,33].…”

“…After facing the direct consequences, reactive strategies are activated, and the contingency plan is implemented, for which it is necessary to analyze the current market situation and adapt the business to it [2,169,170]. This action may include a change in the supply chain structure, or the strategic objectives initially set [163].…”

“…The results were summarized in Table A2 of the Appendix A. The new elements of resilience identified are: Robustness [30][31][32][33]137,138,[163][164][165][166][167]; contingency planning [2,[31][32][33]37,137,157,[167][168][169][170]; disruptive environment awareness [29,31,33,37,157,165,[169][170][171]; knowledge management [29,[31][32][33]37,163,165,169,172]; market adaptation [2,33,163,169,170]; and strategic alignment [32,173].…”

“…Strategic alignment is based on the elements of shared information and trust among the members of the chain. The market adaptation element was included in the principle of agility, considering that the supply chain generates a response to the disruptive event and competitive strategies adapted to the current or modified market structure (possibly affected by the disruption) and recovers its activity [2,33,170].…”

“…The elements of knowledge management and disruptive environment awareness were incorporated into the principle of SCRM culture. These two elements, together with innovation and leadership, allow the members of the supply chain to recognize the existence of possible disruptions and develop actions aimed at avoiding or reducing the effects [29,31,33,165,170]. Additionally, based on the experience, these elements generate learning and actions for future situations, including management capability, so that their human resources are trained, coached, and evaluated for increasing performance if a disruptive event happens [29,31,32,163,169,172].…”