Managing Supply Chains on the Silk Road: Strategy, Performance, and Risk

(CRC Press: Boca Raton, FL) -- Historically important trade routes for goods of all kinds for more than 3,000 years, the Silk Road has once again come to prominence. Managing Supply Chains on the Silk Road: Strategy, Performance, and Risk (CRC Press, 2011) presents emerging supply chain practices from the Silk Road regions that include China, Hong Kong, India, Pakistan, Iran, Central Asia, Lebanon, Turkey, Israel, and Hungary. It takes a results-oriented, comparative approach to supply chain management covering structural, strategic, and operational topics.

Authors Çagri Haksöz, Sridhar Seshadri, and Ananth V. Iyer first present how the historical Silk Road supply chains operated and then provide new and interesting examples from different countries the Silk Road passed, from China to Europe. They demonstrate that the supply chain concept and its related practices are not new, per se, and invented recently in the West. Rather, it was practiced for centuries along the Silk Road and became the foundation for today’s global supply chains. Against this backdrop, the reader explores the differences and similarities along the Silk Road in the supply chain management process and what can be learned from them.

As supply chains become longer, leaner, and more scattered around the globe, performance and risk become two sides of a coin. Bringing together a diverse team of experts from academia and the business world, the book’s coverage spans not only regions, but industries. This fresh perspective provides insights for assessing performance and hedging risk and opens up new directions for research.

Features:
• Supplies a perspective of emerging market supply chain management practice in Silk Road countries
• Examines a timely topic for practitioners and business executives in the field, as well as students
• Discusses a variety of supply chain management practices and case studies from Silk Road geography
• Provides a comprehensive view of supply chain management with strategy, performance, and risk dimensions
• Connects past and present supply chain practices and trends on the Silk Road

Table of contents:

• Silk Road Supply Chains: A Historical Perspective
• The Silk Road Linking Artisans in India to Designers in Italy and World Markets
• Logistics Management Insights from the Silk Road Geography
• Formal and Informal Financial Institutions and Entrepreneurship: The Case of Bazaars and Microfinance in Central Asia
• Israel: A Start-Up Nation in a Global Supply Chain Context—The Revival of a Virtual Silk Road
• Decoding Supply Chain Leadership in India
• Borusan Lojistik: Winning in the 3PL Market
• Crossdocking Insights from a Third Party Logistics Firm in Turkey
• Balance of Power between Buyer and Supplier: The Case of Chinese and Western Companies
• Outsourcing Design to Asia: ODM Practices
• Milk Collection at Nestle Pakistan Ltd
• The Role of Hungarian Railway on the New Silk Road
• Private-Humanitarian Supply Chain Partnerships on the Silk Road
• Incorporating Harvest, Maturity, Yield, and Demand Risk in Planning for Agricultural Supply Chains for Premium Products
• Managing Procurement Risks in Turkish Machinery Industry: The Case of Renkler Makina
• Supply Chain Risk and Sourcing Strategies: Automotive Industry in Iran

“… Haksoz, Seshadri, and Iyer have brought together 28 scholars and business executives from different continents to share their perspectives about past and present trading activities along the Silk Road,” writes Christopher Tang in the foreword. “… [the book] examines a wide range of issues arising from a multicultural perspective. … provides clear insights of the past and the present that will help academics and practitioners to gain a better understanding of the future.”

Çagri Haksöz, is an assistant professor of operations management at Sabanci School of Management, Sabanci University, Istanbul, Turkey. His current research focuses on risk management in global supply chains, design and management of options in supply chain contracts, strategic product recall management, pricing weather derivatives, and risk intelligence.

Sridhar Seshadri is a professor of information, risk, and operations management at McCombs School of Business, University of Texas, Austin. His current research focuses on equilibrium asset pricing, pricing and revenue optimization, and risk management in supply chains.

Ananth V. Iyer is the Susan Bulkeley Butler Chair in Operations Management and a director of the Global Supply Chain Management Initiative of The Dauch Center for the Management of Manufacturing Enterprises at the Krannert School of Business, Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana. His current research focuses on analysis of supply chains, including the modeling of spare parts supply chains, auto industry supply chains, the impact of promotions on logistics systems in the grocery industry, analysis of the impact of competitors on operational management models, and the role of supply contracts.

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