Blog Archives

Next time in China: Guanxi

Guanxi: Connections and relations are what matter most, while contracts, rules and laws are to likely to be overridden if they are in conflict with harmonious relations.

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Supply Chain Risk: Culture Shock

Is culture shock the reason why so many global and cross-culture business relationships fail? When it comes to Western buyers and Chinese suppliers this may very well be the case, and while issues related to product quality or supplier reliability may seem as the obvious cause externally, cultural differences may be the root cause internally.

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ARTICLES and PAPERS
Humanitarian aid is better when decentralized
Humanitarian operations rely heavily on logistics in uncertain, risky, and urgent contexts, making t[...]
Learning from toys - again
The year 2007 will be remembered as the year the toy industry was shaken by a seemingly endless stre[...]
BOOKS and BOOK CHAPTERS
Book Review:Managing Risks in Supply Chains
To make up for yesterday's perhaps overly harsh critique of just one article from this book, this is[...]
Supply Chain Risk - Jetzt auch auf Deutsch
Unbeknown to me - or perhaps I really should have known better - there appears to be a large body of[...]
REPORTS and WHITEPAPERS
Global Risks 2012
Are economic imbalances and social inequality risk reversing the gains of globalization? Should we s[...]
Engineering transportation lifelines
New Zealand is probably not the fist country that comes to mind when thinking of state-of-the-art tr[...]
from HERE and THERE
BBC World Debate: Disasters - Prepare or React?
Should we actually bother to spend time and money on disaster mitigation, or should we rather focus [...]
Thanks to Somali pirates no Santa is coming this year?
In a previous article, 2 weeks ago, I voiced my opinion on whether Somali Pirates can shut down Euro[...]