Supply Chain Flexibility in dynamic business environments - Increasing or decreasing Performance?

Since the prevailing business environment is becoming ever more dynamic and uncertain, especially on the supply side, a growing number of academics and practitioners have been drawing attention to supply chain risks. This development has been triggered particularly by the growing number of catastrophic events, such as natural and man-made disasters more than every second company was affected by a catastrophic event in the last three years-, which disrupt supply chains around the globe. Therefore, we focus on such external supply chain risks which are characterized by low probability and high impact and can even devastate an enterprise if there is no risk management.(119) We investigate approaches for firms to enhance their Supply Chain Flexibility and to mitigate supply chain disruptions. Based on an empirical study (n = 147), we show that Supply Chain Flexibility and Supply Chain Risk Management are significant antecedents of Supply Chain Performance.