ELE 3783 Sustainable Risk Management in Value Chains
ELE 3783 Sustainable Risk Management in Value Chains
Background
Risk management in value chains, often termed supply chain risk management has been one of the fastest growing research streams within operations and supply chain management in recent years. Today’s turbulent environment makes this topic no less important. The global COVID-19 pandemic, the rush to reopen the economy from lockdown, Brexit, the blockage in the Suez Canal, the war in Ukraine and the increased focus on environmental sustainability have exposed many issues in value chains related to risk and uncertainties, potentially leading to a lack of resilience. Challenges relate to coping with complexity and uncertainty. For example, globalization means that today’s value chains often cross not only organizational boundaries, but also national borders, including many tiers and long lead times. These challenges highlight the need for collaborative and sustainable strategies, not to mention techniques and tools to understand, identify, visualize, quantify and reduce risk in value chains.
Objective and expectations
The objective of the course is to provide students with insights into the challenges and ways of dealing with sustainable risk management in value chains. This includes competence in applying frameworks for identifying, assessing, mitigating, and responding to value chain risks in a variety of different contexts, and appreciation of sustainability perspectives and challenges, including the sustainable development goals (SDG), environmental, social and governance (ESG) and circular economy issues related to managing risk.
The course combines theory, practical examples, and interactional learning, and students are expected to actively participate through work requirements (a-synchronized homework assignments), and discussions in class (synchronized assignments in class).
During the course students shall gain knowledge of:
- Value chain risk management in general and how it relates to sustainability perspectives and frameworks
- Challenges and applications of strategies, tools, and techniques in different contexts for preparing and responding to risks, and how to report on this
- Key stakeholders in sustainable risk management in value chains
After completed course students shall be able to:
- Apply value chain risk concepts and frameworks in different contexts
- Communicate how value chain risk management is practiced in different contexts
- Use decision-support tools in value chain risk management
- Apply sustainability concepts (like SDG and ESG) in value chain risk management
- Communicate effectively with other stakeholders involved in the value chain about risk management
- Reflect upon the impacts of risk management on sustainability challenges in the value chain
- Know where to find relevant scientific literature about the topic
- Be a reflective and ethical professional
This course is structured in five modules or themes, which will be discussed separately in class. The course will also cover relationships between them. The course will cover the following modules:
- Module 1: Value chains
- Module 2: Risk management
- Module 3: Sustainability
- Module 4: Decision support tools (tools that help bridging these different modules)
- Module 5: Sustainable risk management in value chains (combining all modules)
Subjects discussed within each module include:
Module 1: Value Chains
- What is a value chain?
- Managing value by bridging supply and demand – value chain management
- Lean vs. agile supply chains
Module 2: Risk Management
Overall framework - Identifying, assessing, mitigating, and responding to risks.
- Risks and uncertainties in the chain – abnormal and normal risks
- Risk mitigation strategies – designing the chain
- Collaboration across organizational/sectorial boundaries
Module 3: Sustainability
- Introduction to the SDG and ESG frameworks and a discussion about the impact of these frameworks on strategy, decision-making, and value chain risk management
- Introduction to the circular economy and circular business models and their relationships with sustainability
- Challenges with circular economy
Module 4: Decision support tools
Causal loop diagramming: visualizing relationships in systems and discovering feedback structures in systems (like value chains)
Module 5: Sustainable Risk Management in Value Chains
- Sustainable risk management in value chains and ISO 31000: resilience engineering; recording and reporting; assessment, identification and treatment
- Application of decision support tools in sustainable risk management in value chains: practical case study / company project combining all course elements
The course is taught by a diverse set of lecturers who will present and discuss key concepts and frameworks and how these concepts and frameworks are used in practice. During and in-between lectures several practical cases will be discussed in class or in small groups.
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Higher Education Entrance Qualification
Disclaimer
Deviations in teaching and exams may occur if external conditions or unforeseen events call for this.
This elective will build on relevant aspects of the core courses in (BI's) bachelor programme(s). This means there is no required prerequisite knowledge.
| Mandatory coursework | Courseworks given | Courseworks required | Comment coursework |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mandatory | 3 | 2 | During the course, students will need to hand-in three individual written homework assignments. These assignments will be evaluated with approved/not approved. Only students that get minimum two assignments approved can take the final home exam. |
| Assessments |
|---|
Exam category: Submission Form of assessment: Written submission Weight: 100 Grouping: Individual Duration: 5 Hour(s) Comment: Home exam Exam code: ELE 37831 Grading scale: ECTS Resit: Examination when next scheduled course |
| Activity | Duration | Comment |
|---|---|---|
Teaching | 42 Hour(s) | 42 hours divided in 14 lectures (2 synchronized hours and 1 asynchronized) |
Student's own work with learning resources | 80 Hour(s) | |
Prepare for teaching | 30 Hour(s) | |
Submission(s) | 25 Hour(s) | |
Examination | 23 | The exam will not take 23 hours to complete, but it is expected that students want to catch up on some reading to prepare for the exam |
A course of 1 ECTS credit corresponds to a workload of 26-30 hours. Therefore a course of 7,5 ECTS credit corresponds to a workload of at least 200 hours.