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To delve into the integration of global logistics and supply chain networks amidst the digital transformation era. This study aims to investigate the potential role of China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in facilitating the integration of global flows encompassing both tangible goods and intangibles. Additionally, the study seeks to incorporate third-party logistics activities into a comprehensive global logistics and supply chain integration framework.

Prior research is synthesised into a global logistics and supply chain integration framework. A case study was undertaken on Yuan Tong (YTO) express group to investigate the framework, employing qualitative data analysis techniques. The study specifically examined the context of the BRI to enhance comprehension of its impact on global supply chains. Information was collected in particular to two types of supply chain flows, the physical flow of goods, and intangible information and cash flows.

The proposed framework aligns well with the case study, leading to the identification of global logistics and supply chain integration enablers. The results demonstrate a range of ways BRI promotes global logistics and supply chain integration.

The case study, with multiple examples, focuses on how third-party logistics firms can embrace global logistics and supply chain integration in line with BRI. The case study approach limits generalisation, further applications in different contexts are required to validate the findings.

The framework holds promise for aiding practitioners and researchers in gaining deeper insights into the role of the BRI in global logistics and supply chain integration within the digital era. The identified enablers underscore the importance of emphasising key factors necessary for success in navigating digital transformation within global supply chains.

This chapter aims to critically analyse the implications that the national protectionist policies have on the global supply and value chains and the relocation of production. The analysis is based on the assumptions that the global economy is facing the possibility of decoupling of many trade connections, and this trend favours de-globalisation processes that have long been promoted by populism, nationalism and economic protectionism. It is concluded that global supply, production and value chains although being economically efficient are no longer any more secure under national protectionist policies, and therefore, the relocation of production processes is mainly due to the increase in the level of income and wages of the developing countries that are the destination and which reduce the advantages to relocate.

This study aims to identify and prioritize the key practices and strategies for effective global sourcing and supply chain management (SCM).

The study uses a combination of Pareto analysis and multi-objective optimization based on ratio analysis research methodology to analyze and establish the relationships among the identified key practices and strategies. Pareto analysis enables organization to prioritize organizational efforts and resources by focusing on the most critical factors.

The study shows that the “eco-friendly sourcing strategy”, “lean manufacturing” and “tool cost analysis” are the top critical practices and strategy variables for global sourcing and SCM, whereas the “risk management”, “procurement strategy” and “leverage digital solutions” are the critical practices and strategy variables.

The findings of this research can also assist organizations in making informed decisions to optimize their global sourcing and supply chain operations.

By using these methods, this research paper gives valuable insights into the critical practices and strategies that can enhance efficiency, mitigate risks and drive success in global sourcing and SCM. The subjects and elements this study identified will serve as a framework and suggestions for further theoretical investigation and real-world implementations.

Intersectionist, unionist and relabelling models have largely superseded the subsumption of supply chain management within logistics that formed the basis of the traditionalist model. As there is little congruence between logistics and supply chain management in the emergent intersectionist model, this is eliminated from consideration at the outset. However, an examination of the new unionist and relabelling models, offering differing permutations of the relationship between logistics and supply chain management, suggests that they offer a misleading foundation for examining the costs involved with the dispersal of supply chain activities across the world. The root problem is the failure to integrate the industrial goods transformation network operated by multinational corporations with the global transport and communications network. Reverting to privileging the global transportation and communications network over the industrial goods transformation network in a revamped traditionalist model can overcome this difficulty and open up new research vistas.

The globalisation of supply chains has contributed to modern slavery by degrading labour standards and work practices. The inherent difficulties involved in monitoring extremely fragmented production processes also render workers in and from developing countries vulnerable to labour exploitation. This research adopts a benchmark methodology that will help examine the inherent modern slavery challenges.

This study examines how the benchmark model, including governance, risk assessment, purchasing practice, recruitment and remedy of victims, addresses supply chain modern slavery challenges. The proposed hypotheses are tested based on the reoccurring issues of modern slavery in global supply chains.

Estimations suggest that modern slavery is a growing and increasingly prominent international problem, indicating that it is the second largest and fastest growing criminal enterprise worldwide except for narcotics trafficking. These social issues in global supply chains have drawn attention to the importance of verifying, monitoring and mapping supply chains, especially in lengthy and complex supply chains. However, the advent of digital technologies and benchmarking methodologies has become one of the existing key performance indicators (KPIs) for measuring the effectiveness of modern slavery initiatives in supply chains.

This review provides an understanding of the current situation of global supply chains concerning the growing social issue of modern slavery. However, this includes various individual specialities relating to global supply chains, modern slavery, socially sustainable supply chain management (SCM), logistic social responsibility, corporate social responsibility and digitalisation. Furthermore, the review provided important implications for researchers examining the activities on benchmarking the effectiveness of the existing initiatives to prevent modern slavery in the supply chains.

Global supply chains are more risky than domestic supply chains due to numerous links interconnecting a wide network of firms. These links are prone to disruptions, bankruptcies, breakdowns, macroeconomic and political changes, and disasters leading to higher risks and making risk management difficult. The purpose of this paper is to explore the phenomenon of risk management and risk management strategies in global supply chains.

This paper is based on an extensive literature review and a qualitative study comprising 14 in‐depth interviews and a focus group meeting with senior supply chain executives.

The study provides insights into the applicability of six risk management strategies with respect to environmental conditions and the role of three moderators.

The model is developed in a global manufacturing supply chain context. It should be tested in other contexts and with other methods to provide generalizability. The study takes a much needed step toward building a theory of risk management in global supply chains, which opens important future research directions.

This research provides direction to managers for choosing risk management strategies based on the global supply chain environment. Moderators have practical implications for global supply chain managers.

The paper addresses an identified gap in the literature for selecting risk management strategies in global supply chains. It employs grounded theory, a methodology appropriate for theory‐building, to explore a phenomenon with an inadequate theoretical base.

Value‐added services expand manufacturing organizations’ ability to compete beyond traditional measures of manufacturing competitiveness such as cost, quality, flexibility, and delivery. This concept of expanding the roles of factories to include service has received considerable attention and wide acceptance among both researchers and practitioners. For example, recent empirical studies have demonstrated that manufacturing performance, particularly delivery performance can be enhanced through expanded service roles that focus on effective information flows within the company and to external customers. Despite such benefits, the scope of analysis has been limited to individual manufacturing organizations. Given the realities of global competition, practitioners require knowledge that extends beyond individual organizations. The domain of their problems includes the complexities of interactions with multiple stakeholders along global supply chains. The purpose of this paper, therefore, is to extend the concept of the service factory to global supply chains. Specifically, the approach will be to provide a conceptualization of the role of service in global supply chain management that can be used as a starting point for discussion and further research in this area. We provide several propositions and conclude with implications for both researchers and practitioners.

The purpose of this study is to explore modifications to the supply chain strategies of international manufacturers resulting from recent momentous trade disruptions, including the US-China trade war, global tariff escalations, Brexit and heightened geopolitical tensions.

The research methodology consisted of a series of in-depth personal interviews with senior supply chain executives of six large US international manufacturers.

The study identified several short-term reactive strategies taken, including pulling purchase orders or production forward, building inventory and applying for exceptions from tariffs, along with longer-term proactive strategies such as shifting and expanding supplier and manufacturing locations.

The study’s limitations involve its small sample size and its findings being industry and company-specific to a limited number of firms. While the sample size was deemed sufficient for this exploratory study, larger sample sizes and subsequent industry-specific analyses are recommended.

The global supply chain modifications effectively used by the firms in the study can offer guidance for practitioners facing similar challenges following major trade disruptions.

Due to the very recent emergence of the trade disruptors examined in this study, extant literature is limited. Hence, the findings noted in the paper offer not only guidance for practitioners but also make a strong contribution to research and literature on global supply chain risk management and disruption risk mitigation.

The purpose of this paper is to use content analysis to review the extensive supply chain literature to summarize its past and current trends, and uncover existing gaps and opportunities for future global supply chain research.

Since the study uses content analysis, several dimensions of the literature were analyzed: research purpose, year of publication, journal name, methodology, theory building or verification, country of study, sample industry, global or non-global issues, and article classification.

From a methodological point, the literature mostly consists of empirical and descriptive studies with few exploratory articles. The review shows that global supply chains area relatively “immature” or “new phenomenon” research topic that is gaining interest from practitioners and academics.

It is hoped that by critically examining the extant literature, the authors can clearly identify the challenges and state of global supply chain research to provide supply chain researchers with a precise summary of the literature and directions for future studies.

This study also allows managers to recognize the methodologies and tools that can be used to enhance their supply chains. It is believed that various strategies could be adopted to create a robust global supply chain. In this respect, different industry sectors may require different global strategies and different global practices.

The findings show that there is a shortage of empirical studies on global supply chain strategies and outcomes, and most research focusses on supply chain practices and customer or supplier relationships.

Through its impact on both demand and supply, the outbreak of novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has profoundly disrupted supply chains throughout the world. The purpose of this paper is to explore the underlying drivers of the supply chain vulnerability exposed by COVID-19 and considers potential future directions for global supply.

This paper adopts a case study approach, reviewing the automotive manufacturing sector in Australia to illustrate how neoliberal globalisation policy settings have shifted large tracts of manufacturing from the global north to the global south.

The authors demonstrate the way that neoliberal globalisation policies, facilitated by certain accounting rhetorics and technologies, have consolidated manufacturing in China and Southeast Asia in ways that embed vulnerabilities in global supply chains. The authors present three scenarios for post-COVID-19 supply chains and the accounting techniques likely to garner stronger attention as a result of the pandemic.

The paper illustrates how certain accounting rhetorics and technologies facilitate neoliberal globalisation, embedding supply chain vulnerability that has been exposed by COVID-19. It also suggests how supply chain accounting may develop more robust supply chains in a post-COVID-19 world and sets out an agenda for future research in this area.

A number of practical supply chain accounting and planning technologies are suggested to facilitate more robust supply chains.

This paper draws attention to the neoliberal globalisation policies that have shaped global supply chains as well as how COVID-19, in concert with other geopolitical trajectories, may represent a watershed moment for global supply chains.