Implications of organizational culture for supply chain disruption and restoration

To manage supply chain disruptions, many diverse organizational cultures must work together to restore services and help ensure resiliency. We use a model of culture taken from social anthropology, economics and public management illustrated through two interorganizational cases of humanitarian supply chain disruption: the Federal Emergency Management Agency contracting with Universe Truck Lines to deliver ice after Hurricane Katrina, and the World Food Programme interacting with the Southern African Development Community to deliver maize after the floods of 2002. We illustrate ways in which a lack of understanding of cultural biases is one explanation for poor management of supply chain disruption and how this hypothesis can help direct future research. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.