HANDLING SUPPLY CHAIN DISRUPTIONS. GLOBAL VERSUS LOCAL FIRMS

If you want to survive and remain competitive in the new business environment, you have to expand internationally. International expansion can increase profits and competitiveness, but it increases the company's risk exposure. Supply chain disruptions are an unpredictable and quite damaging category of risk. As global firms face a high range of risks than the local firms, the management of supply chain disruptions could not be the same. In many cases, global and local firms faced the same disruptions but only the global ones handled the disruption successfully. One of these cases was the aflatoxin disruption faced by Meggle and Primalat. On March 2013, the Kosovo Food and Veterinary Agency announced that two Albanian brands of milk contained two to three time higher levels of aflatoxin compared to the level allowed by the European Union. One of these brands was Fast, produced by Meggle, a global firm and the other brand was Primalat, an Albanian company. The laboratory analysis showed that the results were exaggerated, but the losses from this intentional disruption were huge. Primalat was not able to survive while Meggle handled the disruption successfully. The actual study will try to understand the factors that determine the success of global firms in handling supply chain disruptions, compared to local firms. To achieve this aim, semi structured interviews will be conducted with the managers of Meggle and Primalat. The cross comparative analysis will show that supply chain disruptions need special attention, no matter if the disruption is small or big. The success in handling supply chain disruptions depends on organizational culture and company background. Global firms can handle better disruptions due to their strong company background.