Interorganisational - Supply Chain Management

Every now and then the “trickle down effect” hits the news. Originally preserved for new products becoming more affordable through mass production, nowadays I only see the term in combination with supply chain management, in the meaning of sthg spreading globally (typically upstream) through the supply chain. Today it was oil prices, material regulations, and codes and standards. Policy-makers have also come to hijack the idea, designing policies in the hope that they’d spread globally as standards in the supply chain (see the “vision of the EU in a global world“). So far so good. But what about the effects of such threats / hopes on the supply chain?

Interestingly, using the idea of globalisation seems to lead away from it. We’ve seen the trends towards local production in food supply chains, even fashion - time to take them seriously and study localisation once again. Localisation has been studied from the perspective of market adaptation / customisation (for standards see LISA, for practitioner certificates TILP, for research e.g. the Localisation Research Centre), even leading to new concepts such as postponement for mass customisation - and from the perspective of another spillover, that of knowledge.

Concerning the trickle down effect, it is of interest which effects e.g. carbon management has on the supply chain, i.e. towards the choice of local suppliers and products (which we have seen in food supply chains and even fashion). It echoes local employment policies - but underestimates the interdependence of markets through supply chains. Geographical and employment issues aside, time to study the impact of such policies on supply chain design.

Gyöngyi