Climate change resilience of global supply chains

Climate change is posing significant challenges to global supply chains that they need to respond to multifaceted challenges. Supply chains need to be resilient to climate-change related disruptions such as floods, draughts, hurricanes, fires, and extreme temperatures (Ali et al., 2023). Not only can these extreme events cause disruptions to business operations, but they also lead to societal challenges like food shortages caused by draughts or heatwaves that affect employee health (Godde et al., 2021); Levi et al., 2018). While building resilience against extreme events, supply chains must also decarbonise their operations to reduce their contribution to climate change and meet Net-Zero targets (Mishra et al., 2023). Net-Zero targets of governments compel global brands to manage and minimise emissions throughout their whole supply chain in addition to their own activities. 

Supply chain resilience and decarbonisation pose complex problems that supply chains must orchestrate different set of resources in a rapidly changing environment. Supply chain research focuses mostly on the technology and technical aspect of operations such as utilising Industry 4.0 and control towers, yet the “human” element is understudied in resilience and decarbonisation studies. Besides, these two dimensions of climate change readiness are often studied in an isolated way, and the link between resilience and decarbonisation is understudied in the literature. The missing link between resilience and decarbonisation and complexity of them call for an interdisciplinary approach underpinning theories from other disciplines such as human resources, information systems, and economics by utilising different methodologies.

This project seeks passionate applicants that want to help global supply chains prepare for climate change and remain sustainable. The project may involve combination of different qualitative (interview, focus groups, archive data) and quantitative (statistical analysis, multi-criteria decision making, and simulation) methods depending on the discussion between the candidate and supervisors. 

How to apply

Formal applications can be submitted via the University of Bradford web site; applicants will need to register an account and select 'Full-time PhD in Operations and Information Management' as the course, and then specify the project title when prompted.

About the University of Bradford

Bradford is a research-active University supporting the highest-quality research. We excel in applying our research to benefit our stakeholders by working with employers and organisations world-wide across the private, public, voluntary and community sectors and actively encourage and support our postgraduate researchers to engage in research and business development activities.

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