Supply Chain Resilience: Disruptions in Global Maritime Transportation

Sammanfattning

Supply chain resilience has become an important topic within supply chain management, as increasingly complex supply chains set out for increased risk in these networks. Supply chain resilience is a risk management approach that includes the ability to mitigate disruptions through specific capabilities. The previous disruptive events of the COVID-19 pandemic and the Suez Canal blockage-21 have highlighted the vulnerabilities of global trade and the need for more resilient supply chains. The purpose of this thesis was to analyse supply chain resilience and the need for dynamic and operational capabilities in the global maritime transport sector to mitigate impacts from slow-onset and sudden-onset disruptions. In specific, the vulnerabilities highlighted through the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic and the Suez Canal blockage-21 over time. This study was conducted as a multiple case study investigating the maritime transport sector’s resilience during COVID-19 and the Suez Canal blockage-21. The data was triangulated through semi-structured interviews, industry podcasts, and business reports and further analysed using a grounded analysis approach. The study showed that the continuous disruptions on supply chains caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and the Suez Canal blockage-21 generated economic consequences, congestions, and capacity constraints that the maritime transport sector could not fully mitigate. The study also provides evidence that severe impacts on supply chains were not necessarily caused by a lack of resilience, but rather the persistency of disruptions did not diminish over time. Even though the maritime transportation sector is considered flexible and agile in adapting to the new market situation, increased collaboration, integration, innovation, and digitalization were found necessary to improve the resilience of the maritime transport sector to become even better prepared for future disruptions.