Geopolitical Risk Perception and Supply Chain Adaptation : Evidence from Swedish SMEs, 2022–2024

Sammanfattning

This thesis examines how managers of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Sweden perceive and respond to geopolitical supply chain disruption in the post-2022 environment. It asks how managers interpret disruption, which supply chain adaptation strategies they adopt, and how resource constraints and bounded rationality shape their capacity to act. The study adopts a qualitative, interpretivist approach based on five semi-structured interviews with managers of internationally active Swedish SMEs, conducted in May 2026, with firms ranging from 12 to roughly 120 employees across industrial manufacturing and distribution. Data were analysed using reflexive thematic analysis. Six themes emerge. Managers perceive geopolitical disruption through its operational consequences rather than as an abstract geopolitical signal, so the supply chain functions as a perception filter. The perceived permanence of disruption appears to mediate between threat perception and adaptive action. Inventory buffering is the dominant adaptive strategy among firms that respond, taking forms such as safety-stock doubling, anticipatory purchasing and collaborative frame ordering with suppliers, while one firm pursued an opportunity-based strategy. Long-term supplier relationships function as informal resilience infrastructure across all five cases. The binding constraints on adaptation are primarily technical, relational and cognitive rather than financial, though financial capacity does limit proactive buffering for one firm. Firm size shapes the formalisation of risk management but does not determine adaptive effectiveness. The study makes three contributions. It identifies the supply chain as the mechanism through which geopolitical risk is translated into firm-level managerial perception, bridging the geopolitical risk and supply chain management literatures. It shows that SME adaptive constraints are organisational rather than primarily financial, challenging frameworks developed for large firms. And it proposes perceived permanence as an underexplored mediating variable in the chain from disruption perception to adaptive action. The findings are based on five Swedish industrial B2B firms, which constrains generalisability.