انعطاف پذیری زنجیره تامین، عملکرد شرکت و سیاست های مدیریت در صنعت حمل و نقل خطوط هوایی Supply chain resilience, firm performance, and management policies in the liner shipping industry

1. Introduction Businesses compete no longer on an individual basis but as a member of a supply chain (SC) (Christopher, 2000). A wellmanaged SC is thus one of the enduring resources to enhance a firm’s competitive strength. Determining how to lower inventory levels, reduce lead times, increase SC efficiency, and enhance profit is a formidable challenge confronting many managers. Further, specialization in industry and the globalization of materials and markets encourage manufacturers to outsource their productive activities to nations with lower wages to reduce costs. On the other hand, manufacturers market their products to emerging countries with strong purchasing power such as the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) to increase their potential revenue. It is natural for SC members to transform themselves from local to regional or global operations. As an SC expands to include members from different cultures, locations, and time zones, SC management (SCM) becomes a complicated and challenging task. The liner shipping industry is the cornerstone of the semi-manufactured and manufactured goods market with the objective of increasing the goods’ availability and generating higher profits. To achieve this objective, shipping lines need to constantly increase their number of container ships in order to provide broader geographical coverage for their shipping service. Many liner shipping companies began their operations by providing shipping service for a single nation and subsequently expanded to cover a cluster of nations in a region and many nations globally. The expansion of shipping service coverage and service routes renders liner shipping companies’ operations complicated and fragile. Indeed, widespread political instability, climate change, communicable diseases, and terrorist attacks frequently increase the likelihood of SC disruptions. For instance, the 9/11 terrorist attack, damage from Hurricane Katrina, the Tohoku earthquake in Japan in 2011, the Debt Crisis in the EU, and the 2011 flooding in Thailand have all significantly hindered SCM (Pettit et al., 2013). Further, the liner shipping industry needs to tackle operational challenges related to unstable economic cycles, empty container repositioning, seafarer shortages, escalating bunker prices, cargo space oversupply, fluctuating ship prices, and port closures (e.g., port closures due to an explosion at the Tianjin Port, the industrial strike at the port of Long Beach and Los Angeles, the earthquake and tsunami in Japan, and the Hanjin Shipping bankruptcy in Korea). Damages to ships due to collisions, fire, explosions, warfare, terrorist attacks, piracy, and so forth have also weakened organizations’ ability regarding SC resilience (SCR). To be proactive, port authorities and liner operators have to change their business mindset. They must now consider not only whether a disruption will occur but also when the disruption will occur and how long the effects will last before they can operate as usual. In addition to SC costs and efficiency, they have to improve the resilience of their SC (i.e., SCR) to ensure the continued operations of the whole SC and eventually ensure the long-lasting competitiveness of their SC (Christopher and Peck, 2004; Zsidisin and Wagner, 2010).