Erfolgsfaktoren des Supply-Chain-Risikomanagements in der Krise – Eine empirische Analyse kleiner und mittlerer B2C-Unternehmen in Deutschland am Beispiel der Coronapandemie

Although a pandemic is a conceivable scenario in a globalised economy, the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic that broke out in November 2019 represented a first in recent history with its profound impact on companies and society as a whole. With the global spread of the pandemic, Germany also experienced a massive decline in economic output for all sectors of the economy. The containment measures taken by global governments resulted in a parallel supply and demand shock. The deficits revealed in the risk management of small and medium-sized B2C companies in the face of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, suggest considerable lack of awareness of how to deal with a pandemic crisis effectively from an economic point of view. The high extent of damage caused by the pandemic can be attributed to the fact that the pandemic risk was quite dramatically misjudged in terms of its probability of occurrence, both in practice and in research, and that, overall, the risk was only considered to be of low relevance.
The aim of the dissertation is to examine concrete strategies and measures in supply chain risk management using the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic as an example, and to determine how small and medium-sized B2C companies in Germany can minimise the risk to the supply chain as a result of future pandemics. To this end, building on an extensive literature review for an empirical study, 16 semi-structured interviews were conducted with experts from small and medium-sized B2C companies in Germany, and qualitatively analysed.
The results show that a sustainable combination of proactive and reactive strategies and measures of supply chain risk management, together with a strong cooperation with all stakeholders along the supply chain can help in the management of pandemic-related supply chain disruptions. To this end, a total of 25 action suggestions for practice as well as research have been identified.
This dissertation represents the first theoretical-conceptual as well as empirical study on supply chain risk management of small and medium-sized B2C companies in Germany with regard to coping with a pandemic.