Flourishing in the Face of Supply Chain Disruption

Proactive managers create dynamic organizations that survive and prosper under any circumstances. Joseph Fiksel and Keely L. Croxton, both of The Ohio State University, explain how resilient enterprises are adapting successfully to turbulence.

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How can companies thrive in a turbulent business environment? How can they best design resilient assets, products, and processes?

MIT Sloan Management Review hosted a webinar and Twitter chat in September, 2015, to discuss these questions and more with Joseph Fiksel and Keely L. Croxton.

Fiksel is the executive director of the Sustainable and Resilient Economy program at The Ohio State University. He is also the author of the new book Resilient by Design: Creating Businesses That Adapt and Flourish in a Changing World (Island Press, October 2015). Croxton is an associate professor of logistics at the Fisher College of Business at The Ohio State University and has worked with Ohio State’s Global Supply Chain Forum to develop a process-oriented framework for supply chain management.

During the session, Fiksel and Croxton discussed the types of risks companies face and highlighted companies that have improved shareholder value in turbulent times. Highlights of the conversation were posted on Twitter at #MITSMRdisruption.

“We’ve seen some limitations in the traditional risk management approach and believe that companies should really think about resilience as an inherent feature in their supply chain — not focused on mitigating any one particular risk, but on mitigating risks overall,” said Croxton.

Fiksel and Croxton are coauthors, along with Mikaella Polyviou (a doctoral candidate at The Ohio State University) and Timothy J. Pettit (United States Air Force Academy) of “From Risk to Resilience: Learning to Deal With Disruption,” which appeared in the Winter 2015 issue of MIT Sloan Management Review. Their webinar presentation was based on this article.

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