Speaker: Min Zhang, Professor, Queen's Business School, Queen’s University Belfast
Time: 9:00 a.m., May 7,2026
Venue: Room 105, Building 12, Wushan Campus
Biography
Dr Min Zhang is a Professor in Operations Management at the Queen’s Business School, Queen's University Belfast. His research interests have been in Operations and Supply Chain Management, Innovation and Business Analytics. He has published extensively in leading international journals, including Journal of Operations Management, Production and Operations Management, International Journal of Operations and Production Management, International Journal of Production Economics, British Journal of Management, and International Journal of Production Research.
Abstract:
Firms have noticed that natural disasters in their supply chains pose significant risks to their operations. Existing research has predominantly examined the effects of natural disasters that directly impact firms' operations. This study extends the literature by adopting a multi-tier supply chain perspective to empirically examine the impact of natural disasters affecting a firm’s Tier-2 suppliers on its operating performance, and how this impact is influenced by the resilience of its Tier-1 suppliers. We construct an 11-year panel comprising more than 13,000 supply chains of UK-listed companies. The results reveal that natural disasters affecting Tier-2 suppliers significantly deteriorate UK firms’ operating performance, providing empirical evidence that such disruptions propagate through multi-tier supply chains. This adverse effect is significantly mitigated when Tier-1 suppliers exhibit strong production resilience, whereas Tier-1 suppliers’ inventory slack does not moderate it. This finding contributes to the literature by revealing that productivity and inventory slack, two widely used strategies for building supply chain resilience, play distinct roles in mitigating the negative impacts of natural disasters affecting supply chains. It also provides empirical evidence of the ripple effects of natural disasters in multi-tier supply chains. We suggest that UK firms adopt a multi-tier supply chain perspective to manage natural disaster risks and collaborate with supply chain partners to build resilience.
