An Understanding of Supply Chain Network Evolution

Supply chains have become increasingly complex in today’s fast-paced and globalized business environment. Supply chain management practitioners and scholars are shifting their perspectives of SCM from a conventional linear system of sequential dyadic relationships to a more complex non-linear system. This shift reflects the evolution of supply chains into intricate networks characterized by numerous interconnected entities, requiring more sophisticated strategies to manage these relationships effectively. This dissertation, consisting of three essays, addresses the overarching question of supply chain network evolution and how it influences supply chain outcomes. The first essay systematically reviews the network evolution literature, emphasizing the understanding of how supply chain networks change and evolve. This first essay provides a roadmap for supply chain network evolution (SCNE), building on a multidimensional understanding of SCNE and bridging the gap between theoretical underpinnings and research methods useful for further investigating SCNE. The second essay, leveraging institutional theory, develops and tests hypotheses to examine the enactment and enforcement of public policy on supply networks. Specifically, the second essay investigates the actual effect of Prescription Drug Monitoring Programs (PDMP) on targeted policy outcomes, along with the unintended effects of PDMPs on the opioid supply network in the context of the opioid epidemic. It employs a panel event study approach based on a unique dataset that integrates secondary data from federal agencies across a nine-year panel. The third essay investigates the relationship between supply network complexity and operational performance and their dependence on a focal firm’s structural position in the supply network during an extreme disruption. Leveraging the supply chain structure dataset of Bloomberg and COMPUSTAT, this essay examines the supply networks of 76 focal firms in the computer and electronic product (CEP) manufacturing industry, both before and after the onset of extreme disruption.