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One of the major themes of the book, explored in Chapter 13, is the growing dependency of companies on deep-tier suppliers as well as on concentrations of supply sources that create fragile chokepoints in the global economy. Although the world has yet to see a true systemic collapse of any supply chain for a major product category, these chokepoints and other trends signal potential near-misses that presage a more serious event. Supply chain risk management is in a race between the fragility of complex global supply chains and the resilience created by better risk management.

This chapter takes the automobile industry as an empirical setting for clarification of the concept of modularity in product architecture. Three arenas of modularity: Modularity in Design, Modularity in Production, and Modularity in Use are discussed as presenting alternative criteria for making boundary choices in complex products. The chapter moves on to understanding strategic drivers for pushing the product architecture towards modularity. It then considers the implications of these different paths for industry dynamics (in particular the power balance between customer and supplier companies) and supply chain management.

Globalization implies that suppliers play a growing role in the companies’ risks, disruptions, and response options. Chapter 7 delves into companies’ proactive approaches toward supplier risk management, using a segmentation of the procurement conditions. It is based, on the one hand, on the complexity and risk associated with the input purchased from the supplier and, on the other hand, on the company’s annual expenditure with that supplier. The chapter also discusses the growing problem of counterfeit materials that arise as supply chains grow longer and more opaque.

Companies’ increasing awareness of supply chain risks, coupled with the growing use of technology, has led to a greater emphasis on detection, which is the subject of Chapter 8. The sooner a company knows about a general risk or a specific event, the sooner it can address it; the first company to lock in alternative supplies has an advantage. New technologies and new services help companies detect risks and events sooner than ever before.

Good telecommunication systems, especially wireless telecommunications play no small part in the development of effective IT strategies. Nokia also incorporates the same totally integrated management (TIM) in its operations as the ones used by other Level 3 IT users which is demonstrated through partnering strategies between clients and suppliers, compromising the standards of the open industry, and the supply chain management that the company uses on an international level. Because Nokia is one of the most successful players in the mobile telecommunications industry, this chapter concentrates on the strategies and technologies involved in how Nokia's products facilitate the strategies of leading IT users. Also, the chapter provides an account of Nokia's rise to success, and an examination of how IT is integrated within the company' demand and supply management system.

Takes the automobile industry as an empirical setting for clarification of the concept of modularity in product architecture. Three arenas of modularity, modularity in design, modularity in production and modularity in use, are discussed as presenting alternative criteria for making boundary choices in complex products. Moves on to understanding strategic drivers for pushing the product architecture towards modularity. Considers the implications of these different paths for industry dynamics (in particular the power balance between customer and supplier companies) and supply chain management.

This chapter discusses some contractual issues in light of the requirement that Binding Corporate Rules (BCR) should be internally binding on the group companies and employees of the multinational, and externally binding for the benefit of the beneficiaries of BCR. The latter requires discussion of the enforceability of unilateral undertakings by the beneficiaries of BCR. Transnational Private Regulation (TPR) is often effectuated through contractual ‘supply chain management’, a solution which is also part of the BCR regime. Supply chain management also raises issues of enforceability by the beneficiaries of these contracts, which are of equal relevance to BCR. How the various supply chain issues can be best addressed in BCR is discussed.

This study explores trade-offs particularly relevant for firms that compete on innovation, but which have outsourced manufacturing and therefore need to integrate knowledge by involving their new contract manufacturers in the innovation and development activities of outsourced parts. The empirical analysis is based on survey data from 127 manufacturing firms in Sweden. The analysis shows that trade-offs remain in make–buy decisions, especially between cost and flexibility, and cost and speed. When comparing different groups of firms, the results also show that knowledge integration in terms of collaboration between outsourcing firms and their suppliers reduces some trade-offs but intensifies others. The chapter concludes that technology-based firms that compete on innovation often have to involve their new suppliers in the innovation and development activities of outsourced parts. However, when doing so, they have to consider that they cannot ‘have it all’ as the existing management literature often claims.

This chapter addresses how aspects of transparency in the food sector can be addressed by using the methodological approaches developed by supply chain management theory. This approach is centred on the use of focus groups, networks, and case studies in order to highlight how the food sector can best deal with specific issues. The chapter highlights the supply chain approach and the insights it can offer with reference to the food sector, specifically in dealing with the challenge of sustainability, and how this may affect costs and prices throughout the supply chain. Policy implications arise with respect to facilitating networking activities so that the cost and price changes can be balanced throughout the supply chain and removing obstacles to cooperation.

This chapter examines what corporations say they are doing to address human rights risks presented by particular business practices in particular contexts. It offers an overview of the different strategies being used by transnational business enterprises to respond to concerns expressed by investors, consumers, and affected communities. Among the self-regulation strategies used by businesses examined are participation in multistakeholder initiatives designed to address human rights issues, human rights impact assessments, audits and certifications, supply chain contract provisions, and corporate responses to ratings and reports by concerned stakeholder constituencies. The chapter presents the findings of a discourse analysis of codes created by competing corporations in selected industry sectors assessing over time the extent to which codes incorporate reference to human rights standards and refer to emerging self-regulation strategies. Corporate responses to allegations of complicity in abuse are analyzed. The chapter argues that the discursive frame asserted by corporate responsibility incorporating rights increasingly treats voluntary norms as obligatory to maintaining a “social license” to operate.

This chapter applies the BKAP model of action to a number of important theoretical and empirical puzzles that have been confronted by organization theorists in particular and by social scientists more generally. Specifically, the chapter explores the applicability of the BKAP model to central issues in artistic movements with a case study of the Ballets Russes in early twentieth-century France, entrepreneurship theory, and collective action. The chapter then turns to several other issues related to organizing and strategy and the individual and firm level, including dynamic capability, microfoundations of organizing, supply chain management, sensemaking, ambidexterity, transactive memory systems, emotional intelligence, and job crafting. From there the chapter turns to implications for mobilizing action across the analogue-digital divide, and for education, social inequality, and social mobility. The chapter concludes by relating the author’s approach to de Tocqueville’s “science of association.”