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This paper aims to examine the effect of social disruption on the use of technologies for digitizing business-to-business (B2B) processes. The aim is to assess how digitalization technologies (DT) may impact corporate performance (CP) in B2B settings.

The methodology is based on a questionnaire survey in Norway, and a deductive research design. A total of 216 usable questionnaires out of 356 were returned, generating a response rate of 60.6%.

This study shows that there is an effect of social disruption on DT (such as digital communication tools, social media and customer relationship management systems) in B2B settings that may impact CP.

This study indicates that the use of technologies to digitize B2B processes may enhance CP when social disruption occurs.

This study offers insights to companies that need help in adapting their business processes to the changing social and technological environment. This study also highlights the importance of digitalization for business survival in the marketplace and society.

This study sheds light on the effect of social disruption on DT and provides opportunities for managing CP.

This paper provides evidence based quantification of both “actual” disruption of industries as well as a measure of disruption “hype”. The data cover a seven-year period from 2012 to 2018 across 12 industries. The authors’ complemented the research with a survey of 2000 business executives. Whereas there has been some measures of disruption in the past, no research to the authors’ knowledge has been conducted that measure both actual disruption and disruption hype.

The current fascination with disruption hides an awkward truth, we assume it is happening, but do we really know for sure? Disruption is rarely defined and almost never measured. Equally, the influence of the hype around disruption is hard to gauge. The authors do not know to what extent hype is driving management action. This is worrisome as the disruption “noise level” can lead to unhealthy collective thinking and bad business decision-making. Some rigour is required. To craft winning strategies, executives should take a more evidence-based approach for managing disruption.

The authors’ failed to find evidence of any correlation between the hype around an industry disruption and actual disruption within that industry. So the important conclusion for executives is “do not believe the hype”. We found some surprising differences by industry between actual disruption and the hype by industry.

Disruption is one of the most talked about subject in the field of strategy, yet there is little quantification. With this research, the authors’ aim is to advance the fact-based understanding of disruption. Disruption hype is never measured but has a strong influence on executives. The authors have quantified hype using online, search, social media and survey sources. Much more is needed to be able to measure hype more accurately.

The authors’ recommend a set of practical guidelines for executives to support fact-based strategy formulation: analysis of actual disruption, scenario planning and strategic responses.

The “noise” around industry disruption is so high that it is assumed to happen. Much of what is written is quasi-fake news. The authors need to rebalance the debate with fact-based analysis.

To authors’ knowledge, there has never been any fact-based analysis of both actual and hype disruption levels.

Food supply chain resilience is a critical aspect in ensuring the continuous and reliable flow of food, particularly in the face of disruptions. This study aims to address specific gaps in the existing literature by conducting a bibliometric analysis. The primary objective is to identify key areas of concern and lacunae related to disruptions and resilience within the food supply chain. The study also strives to contribute to the field by developing a comprehensive framework that evaluates the factors influencing resilience. Furthermore, the research intends to propose effective strategies for mitigating and recovering from disruptions, emphasizing the urgency of these measures in light of identified gaps in the current body of literature.

To achieve these objectives, the authors extracted the most relevant papers from Scopus and Web of Science (WoS) databases. The analysis parameters included a comprehensive review of current food supply chain practices and an exploration of trending research topics, such as sustainability, adaptability, circular economy and agility. Notably, the study recognized the pervasive impact of COVID-19 on food supply chain disruptions, with a high occurrence in the literature. Using advanced analytics tools like VOSviewer and Biblioshiny, the research delved into the role of modern technologies, including Industry 4.0, the Internet of Things (IoT), artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML) and blockchain in addressing disruptions and enhancing resilience.

The research reveals a significant impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on food supply chain disruptions, underscoring the critical need for strategies to bolster resilience. Notably, the study identifies the pivotal role of modern technologies (Industry 4.0, IoT, AI, ML and blockchain) in mitigating disruptions and enhancing resilience in the food supply chain. The bibliometric analysis conducted through VOSviewer and Biblioshiny provides valuable insights into research trends and focal areas within the literature.

The observed importance of Industry 4.0, IoT, AI, ML and blockchain implies a practical need for integrating these technologies into food supply chain operations. Moreover, the paper discusses strategies for reducing the impact caused by disruptions, providing practical guidance for resilience planning in food supply chains. Researchers can leverage the findings to direct future efforts toward areas with identified gaps and opportunities, fostering advancements in the field and offering practical insights for real-world applications.

By amalgamating insights from bibliometric analysis and the developed framework, this study contributes to a holistic understanding of the challenges and opportunities in fortifying the resilience of the food supply chain. The identified factors and strategies offer valuable insights for researchers and practitioners seeking to address disruptions in food supply chains. The study’s unique contribution lies in bridging theoretical perspectives with practical applications, enhancing the relevance of business-to-business/industrial supply chain theories.

This study aims to investigate the interplay between a proactive attitude towards disruptions – supply chain disruption orientation – and supply chain resilience, increasing our understanding of their influence on reducing the impact of supply chain disruptions within the B2B context.

As unexpected disruptions are closely related to a dynamic and changing perception of the environment, this research is framed under the dynamic capabilities lens, consistent with existing resilience literature. The authors used partial least squares-path modeling (PLS-PM) to empirically test the proposed research model using survey data from 216 firms.

Results show that a proactive approach to disruptions alone is insufficient in mitigating their negative impact. Instead, a firm’s disruption orientation plays a crucial role in boosting its resilience, which acts as a mediator, reducing the impact of disruptions.

This paper sheds light on the mechanisms by which firms can mitigate the effects of supply chain disruptions and offers insights into how certain capabilities are needed so that firms’ attitudes can effectively impact firm performance. This research thus suggests that dynamic capabilities, traditionally perceived as being enabled by other elements, act themselves as enablers. Consequently, they have the potential to translate strategic orientation or attitudes into tangible effects on performance, enriching our understanding of how firms combine their internal attitudes and capabilities to achieve sustained competitive advantage.

The objective of this study is to examine how emotions play a role in the firm’s reaction to disruptions in the supply chain. Drawing on the upper echelons theory, we evaluate whether managers’ perception of collective emotions (CEs) in the supply environment affects the execution of specific organisational responses (bridging and buffering) to disruptive events. Furthermore, we investigate to what extent companies' own capabilities, such as supply chain resilience, influence this relationship.

A web-based survey was distributed among managers involved in supply chain relationship management (e.g. supply chain or purchasing managers). LinkedIn was used to identify and contact adequate respondents, and 221 valid responses were collected. The proposed theoretical model was empirically tested using structural equation modelling based on partial least squares (PLS-SEM).

Results suggest that emotions can shape a firm's response to supply chain disruptions. In fact, managers are more likely to pursue both bridging and buffering strategies as their perception of CEs increases. However, the intensity and underlying motivations for pursuing each strategy differ.

When CEs are perceived by buyer managers, stronger supply chain resilience incentivises the choice of cooperative practices within existing suppliers, thereby reinforcing pre-existing links. We conclude that combining companies' inherent variables or capabilities with managerial cognition and perceptions can improve our understanding of decision-making processes and buyer–supplier relationships.

Disruptions at ports may destroy the planned ship schedules profoundly, which is an imperative operation problem that shipping companies need to overcome. This paper attempts to help shipping companies cope with port disruptions through recovery scheduling.

This paper studies the ship coping strategies for the port disruptions caused by severe weather. A novel mixed-integer nonlinear programming model is proposed to solve the ship schedule recovery problem (SSRP). A distributionally robust mean conditional value-at-risk (CVaR) optimization model was constructed to handle the SSRP with port disruption uncertainties, for which we derive tractable counterparts under the polyhedral ambiguity sets.

The results show that the size of ambiguity set, confidence level and risk-aversion parameter can significantly affect the optimal values, decision-makers should choose a reasonable parameter combination. Besides, sailing speed adjustment and handling rate adjustment are effective strategies in SSRP but may not be sufficient to recover the schedule; therefore, port skipping and swapping are necessary when multiple or longer disruptions occur at ports.

Since the port disruption is difficult to forecast, we attempt to take the uncertainties into account to achieve more meaningful results. To the best of our knowledge, there is barely a research study focusing on the uncertain port disruptions in the SSRP. Moreover, this is the first paper that applies distributionally robust optimization (DRO) to deal with uncertain port disruptions through the equivalent counterpart of DRO with polyhedral ambiguity set, in which a robust mean-CVaR optimization formulation is adopted as the objective function for a trade-off between the expected total costs and the risk.

This study aims to test the market anomaly of herding behavior driven by the response to supply chain disruptions in extreme market conditions such as those observed during COVID-19. The authors empirically test the response of the capital market participants for B2B firms, resulting in herding behavior.

Using the event study approach based on the market model, the authors test the impact of supply chain disruptions and resultant herding behavior across six sectors and among different B2B firms. The authors used cumulative average abnormal returns (CAAR) and cross-sectional absolute deviation (CSAD) to examine the significance of herding behavior across sectors.

The event study results show a significant effect of COVID-19 due to supply chain disruptions across specific sectors. Herding was detected across the automotive and pharmaceutical sectors. The authors also provide evidence of sector-specific disruption impact and herding behavior based on the black swan event and social learning theory.

The authors examine the impact of COVID-19 on herding in the stock market of an emerging economy due to extreme market conditions. This is one of the first studies analyzing lockdown-driven supply chain disruptions and subsequent sector-specific herding behavior. Investors and regulators should take sector-specific responses that are sophisticated during extreme market conditions, such as a pandemic, and update their responses as the situation unfolds.

Severe disruptions to maritime supply chains, including port closures, congestion and shortages in shipping capacity, have occurred during the COVID-19 pandemic. This paper’s purpose is to explore flexibility-based countermeasures that enable actors in maritime supply chains to mitigate the effects of disruptions with different characteristics.

Semi-structured interviews were conducted with shipping lines, shippers, forwarders and ports. Data on the COVID-19 pandemic's effects and countermeasures were collected and compared with data regarding the 2016–2017 Gothenburg port conflict.

Spatial, capacity, service and temporal flexibility emerged as the primary countermeasures, whilst important characteristics of disruptions were geographical spread, duration, uncertainty, criticality, the element of surprise and intensity. Spatial flexibility was exercised in both disruptions by switching to alternative ports. During the COVID-19 pandemic, ensuring capacity flexibility included first removing and then adding vessels. Shipping lines exercising service flexibility prioritised certain cargo, which made the spot market uncertain and reduced flexibility for forwarders, importers and exporters that changed carriers or traffic modes. Experience with disruptions meant less surprise and better preparation for spatial flexibility.

Understanding how actors in maritime supply chains exercise flexibility-based countermeasures amid disruptions with different characteristics can support preparedness for coming disruptions.

Comparing flexibility-based measures in a pandemic versus port conflict provides insights into the important characteristics of disruptions and the relevance of mitigation strategies. The resilience of maritime supply chains, although underexamined compared with manufacturing supply chains, is essential for maintaining global supply chain flows.