Towards an Ecosystem Approach to Supply Chain Reconfiguration: An Explorative Case Study on the VCUK

While extant literature on supply chain reconfigurations focuses primarily on reconfiguring or redesigning a supply chain for preestablished, ex-ante products, we show how a provisional supply chain may be configured for novel, ex-post products that are outside of suppliers’ normal scopes of production. We conducted an inductive, qualitative study on the VentilatorChallengeUK, an industrial consortium established in response to an urgent call from the UK government in early 2020 to create a new ventilator supply chain, to cope with the spiking need for such medical devices amid the Covid-19 pandemic. Our grounded analysis shows that the process of reconfiguring a supply chain with entirely new sets of suppliers that are outside the medical device sector unfolds through the iterative transformation and (re-)embedding mechanisms between the supply chain and the wider ecosystem resources. By theorising an ecosystem approach, we shed new light on supply chain reconfigurations through collaborations beyond existing boundaries of supply chains upon the onset of large-scale disruptions. We also elaborate the usefulness of the ecosystem construct in the field of operations management by introducing supply chains as the key underpinnings of business ecosystems. Our findings inform managers and policy-makers in terms of how to cultivate the reciprocities between supply chains and the wider ecosystem to be better prepared for future disruptions.