Purpose

This pathway paper offers research guidance for investigating illegal supply chains as they increasingly threaten societies, economies and ecosystems. There are implications for policy makers to consider incorporating supply chain expertise.

Design/methodology/approach

The authors’ work is informed by the team's previous and ongoing studies, research from fields such as criminology, investigative journalism and legal documents.

Findings

Illegality occurs in many supply chains and consists in multiple forms. Certain sectors, supply chain innovations, longer supply chains, and heterogeneous regulations and enforcement exacerbate illegal activities. But illegal activity may be necessary for humanitarian, religious or nationalistic reasons. These areas are under explored by supply chain researchers.

Research limitations/implications

By encouraging supply chain academics to research in this area as well as form collaborative partnerships outside of the discipline, the authors hope to move the field forward in prevention as well as learning from illegal supply chains.

Practical implications

Practitioners seek to prevent issues like counterfeiting with their products as well as fraud for economic and reputational reasons.

Social implications

Governments strive to minimise impacts on their economies and people, and both governments and NGOs attempt to minimise the negative social and environmental impacts. Policy makers need supply chain researchers to evaluate new laws to prevent enabling illegality in supply chains.

Originality/value

As an under-explored area, the authors suggest pathways such as partnering with other disciplines, exploring why these supply chains occur, considering other data sources and methodologies to interdict illegality and learning from illegal supply chains to improve legal supply chains.

中文翻译：

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绝命毒师：供应链管理如何更好地解决非法供应链问题？

目的

随着非法供应链日益威胁社会、经济和生态系统，本途径论文为调查非法供应链提供了研究指导。政策制定者考虑纳入供应链专业知识具有重要意义。

设计/方法论/途径

作者的工作基于该团队之前和正在进行的研究、犯罪学、调查新闻和法律文件等领域的研究。

发现

非法行为存在于许多供应链中，并且有多种形式。某些行业、供应链创新、更长的供应链以及异构的监管和执法加剧了非法活动。但出于人道主义、宗教或民族主义原因，非法活动可能是必要的。供应链研究人员正在探索这些领域。

研究局限性/影响

通过鼓励供应链学者在这一领域进行研究以及在学科外建立合作伙伴关系，作者希望推动该领域在预防和向非法供应链学习方面取得进展。

实际影响

从业者力求防止产品假冒以及出于经济和声誉原因的欺诈等问题。

社会影响

各国政府努力尽量减少对经济和人民的影响，政府和非政府组织都试图尽量减少负面的社会和环境影响。政策制定者需要供应链研究人员评估新法律，以防止供应链中的非法行为。

原创性/价值

作为一个尚未充分探索的领域，作者提出了一些途径，例如与其他学科合作，探索这些供应链出现的原因，考虑其他数据源和方法来阻止非法行为，并向非法供应链学习以改善合法供应链。