Supply chain risk management: Understanding the business requirements from a practitioner perspective

This paper seeks to understand business requirements for supply chain risk management (SCRM) from a practitioner perspective.

Based on the findings from an exploratory quantitative survey and qualitative focus group discussions with supply chain managers, some issues of SCRM are derived and structured along the three conceptual levels of “philosophy”, “principles” and “processes”.

The survey showed that 44 per cent of all eight responding companies expect the vulnerability of their supply chains to increase in the next five years. However, the concept of SCRM is still in its infancy.

The paper contributes to our knowledge on SCRM by presenting the business requirements from a practitioner perspective and by deriving a structure for an integrated approach to SCRM which can guide further research.