Disasters’ impact on supply chains and countermeasure strategies: an overview of the academic literature’ nature

Abstract

Goal: This paper investigates the nature of the academic literature on the disasters’ impacts on Supply Chains (SC) and the strategies adopted to minimize their adverse effects.

Design / Methodology / Approach: Based on a Systematic Literature Review (SLR), we conduct a bibliometric analysis of 129 documents to assess the significant publications’ characteristics regarding year, trend topics, journals, authors, papers more cited, keywords co-occurrence, disasters, SC type, and preliminary identification of disasters’ impacts and countermeasure strategies. 

Results: The results show that most studies address natural disasters (e.g., floods, earthquakes, pandemics), and a significant number of documents refer to the food SC. Our findings indicate that the main impacts are: SC instability, supplies shortages, transport and distribution disruption, production and operation disruption, cash flow problems, and productivity reduction; and the main strategies: agility, the collaboration between SC links, organizational flexibility, information sharing, financial and inventory management, digital transformation, government policies, and benchmarking.

Limitations of the investigation: This is a qualitative study with a preliminary examination of the topic through bibliometric results, and for this reason, the content analysis of the documents is outside the scope of the paper.

Practical implications: The findings of this study provide preliminary insights for SC practitioners into the main countermeasures strategies performed to respond to the SC impacts during a disaster.

Originality / Value: The results contribute to a holistic perspective of the topic, which involves the main features of existing studies in the literature.