Information Dependency in Mitigating Disruption Cascades

Problem definition : Shocks that trigger supply chain disruptions inflict initial losses by damaging firms’ assets. The disruption can then cascade when an affected firm fails to deliver to its buyer, thereby interrupting the buyer’s operations, and continue thus across multiple levels (tiers) in the supply chain. To protect against such disruption cascades, firms can make ex ante investments in risk mitigation. These investments depend heavily on the operational characteristics of network participants and their interconnections. Gathering operational information can be challenging. Our aim is to shed light on the forces that govern information requirements for risk mitigation. Methodology/results : We introduce a game-theoretic model to characterize the equilibrium mitigation by firms in a decentralized arborescent network facing severe disruptions. We find that when the trigger shocks are nonconcurrent events, the equilibrium mitigation by a firm displays a limited vertical dependence on the operational attributes of suppliers that are farther away in tier (network) distance. Specifically, we show that information about a firm’s extended local neighborhood —up to its tier 2 suppliers—suffices to characterize its equilibrium mitigation. Allowing for concurrent shocks to simultaneously strike multiple firms increases the information requirement at partner firms that typically lie within two tiers downstream from the firms experiencing concurrent shocks. Managerial implications : Full supply chain visibility is costly. The literature offers little guidance on how to prioritize efforts to enhance visibility into the attributes of supply chain partners. Rather than a blanket call for greater visibility, our results proffer nuanced managerial prescriptions for the extent to which risk mitigation requires such visibility.