Corporate Vulnerability in Supply Chains - Article Example

Evaluating Doctoral Study The Background The Doctoral study article; Key Areas, Causes, and Contingencies Planning of Corporate Vulnerability of Supply Chains, tries to examine the corporate vulnerability in supply chains, both in the upstream and the downstream sides. The authors argue that in almost all the industries, supply chain is quite dependent on the business activities in supply chain. They also identifies that there is a challenge in learning the vulnerability construct since there is remarkably little past research done on the concept.

The Doctoral Study Rubric describes that background information should consists of a brief overview of the context of the problem. The authors does an excellent job in setting a stage for a research by giving relevant and crucial background information about the supply chain vulnerability as well as other relevant and related aspects. He gives a thorough description of the contingency planning engaged in companies' business activities. This structure of the article is quite commendable in the sense that the authors starts by defining the topic and gets into the outlining its relevance in the corporate level (Brindley, 2004).

The fact that he gives references of the past studies helps one to get a full glimpse of the topic at hand. The Problem Statement. The author of the articles does a superb job to justify the need for research on the vulnerability of supply chain. He argues that the research is intended to study the time dependence, relational dependence, functional dependence in corporate’ supply chain. However, they fail to define the problem statement clearly in a distinct from the introduction. It seems he choose to illustrate this vital aspect together in the introduction section.

It is also commendable that he has adequately provided citations that are within five years time scope. The general business problem is identified and is stated as the overall contingency planning. According to the Doctoral Study Rubric, a specific business problem should be provided in the research problem statement. This is also adequately provided as the vulnerability of supply chains in business activities. The Purpose Statement of the Study The authors of the article have also described the purpose statement of the study.

The organization of this statement is admirable since all the relevant information required is sufficiently provided. It is a requirement that research variables be indicated here. The dependent and independent variables show the correlation that exists between the two sides. They show how the independent variables influence the dependent variables. The vulnerability of the supply chain is the dependent variable which would adversely be impacted by changes in the categories and sources of disturbances of inbound logistics.

Central Research Question In any research study, a research question is crucial to bringing out the actual concepts that are being studied. It is structured in a question format and in a way that the answers provided to the question would be the actual solution to the research problem. The article by Svensson and Goran fail to provide this essential element of the research study. It is also supposed to be a short statement of less than fifteen words. This should be included to make the general research objective clear to respondents and other stakeholders (Svensson, 2004).

Conceptual /Theoretical Framework The article clearly brings out the variables of the conceptual framework. The authors describe it as consisting of inbound logistics that are explained in two dimensions. These describe the independent variables would affect on the vulnerability of the supply chain. The inbound logistics comprise of both the category and the source of disturbance in the supply chain (Svensson, 2004). The only missing aspect is to show the link between the dependent and independent variables.

Reference Svensson, G. (2004). “Key areas, causes and contingency planning of corporate vulnerability in supply chains: a qualitative approach”, International Journal of Physical Distribution and Logistics Management, Vol.34 No.9, pp.728-748.