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Introduction
Global supply chains are being reshaped by a profound reordering of the geopolitical landscape. As the intensifying rivalry among states, industrial policy activism, sanctions, export controls, armed conflicts, and strategic competition increasingly affect cross-border production and trade, supply chains can no longer be understood as merely neutral economic systems governed primarily by efficiency, cost, and market logic. Rather, they are becoming sites of contestation, instruments of strategic influence, and mechanisms through which states and firms seek to secure autonomy, manage dependence, and preserve access to critical technologies, inputs, and markets. In this emerging context, decisions about sourcing, production location, partner selection, and network governance are no longer merely operational or tactical choices; they are increasingly high-commitment strategic responses to a fractured and politically conditioned global order.
These developments are visible in the ongoing reconfiguration of supply networks away from dominant production hubs toward alternative geographies such as India, Vietnam, Bangladesh, and Mexico. Such moves are not driven solely by labor-cost differentials or conventional efficiency calculations. Instead, they reflect broader de-risking imperatives, alliance considerations, national security concerns, and the need to build optionality in the face of regulatory fragmentation and geopolitical volatility. Yet while managerial discourse has moved rapidly in this direction, scholarship has not fully kept pace. Existing research has generated important insights into disruption management and risk mitigation, but still offers a limited understanding of how geopolitical dynamics become structurally embedded in supply chain architectures, governance mechanisms, and technology investments over time.
This Special Issue seeks to advance a more developed research agenda on geopolitically driven supply chain design and governance. We invite contributions that move beyond viewing geopolitics as an episodic external shock and instead conceptualize it as a constitutive force that reshapes the feasible set of strategic choices available to firms. Of particular interest are studies that examine how firms operationalize de-risking into durable network configurations, how governance evolves when political alignment and regulatory pluralism constrain partner and location choices, and how sub-tier dependencies, chokepoints, and concentrated upstream power are reconfigured under geopolitical rivalry.
We are especially interested in contexts where geopolitical tensions are deeply embedded, including semiconductors, critical minerals, defense-related industries, and clean-tech ecosystems. We also welcome work on the role of digital technologies, AI-enabled sensing, digital twins, analytics, and platform-based coordination as enablers of more geopolitically resilient forms of orchestration and governance. Overall, this Special Issue aims to stimulate a robust research stream that reconceptualizes supply chains not simply as economic arrangements, but as contested, politically conditioned, and strategically consequential systems in the contemporary global order.
List of Topic Areas
We welcome submissions addressing (but not limited to) the following areas:
1) Rethinking supply chain design under geopolitical constraints
- Reconfiguration logics (e.g., China+1, in-region-for-region strategies, bifurcated architectures)
- Friend-shoring, nearshoring, reshoring, and their operational consequences
- Designing for controllability, access, and strategic optionality (not just cost and service)
2) Governance and “rules of the game” in contested supply networks
- Governance mechanisms for operating under sanctions, export controls, tariffs, local-content rules, and industrial policy
- Managing contested legitimacy and conflicting institutional demands across jurisdictions
- Power asymmetries among governments, lead firms, platform owners, and deep-tier suppliers
3) Critical minerals, strategic sectors, and geopolitical dependence
- Critical minerals and strategic materials (e.g., rare earths, battery minerals) as drivers of supply chain redesign
- Managing resource scarcity, geopolitical concentration, and chokepoints in upstream networks
- Governance of extraction–processing–manufacturing interdependencies across political blocs
4) Technology as an enabler of geopolitically resilient supply chains
- AI-driven geopolitical risk sensing, scenario analytics, and early-warning systems
- Digital twins and stress-testing for geopolitical disruption (tariffs, sanctions, conflict, border closures)
- Blockchain/traceability, supplier mapping, and deep-tier network intelligence as governance infrastructure
- Platform ecosystems, standards, and data governance in politically sensitive supply networks
5) Operational design tools and adaptive fulfilment
- How supply chain positioning shifts when geopolitical disruptions change lead times, feasible sourcing, or market access
- Dynamic supply chain strategies to manage regulatory shocks (e.g., sudden export controls or sanctions)
- Coordination of supply chain decisions with SCM strategies in multi-tier and multi-region networks
Guest Editors
Ismail Gölgeci, University of Auckland, New Zealand, email: ismail.golgeci@auckland.ac.nz
David Gligor, Florida Gulf Coast University, United States, email: dgligor@fgcu.edu
Submissions Information
Submissions are made using ScholarOne Manuscripts. Author guidelines must be strictly followed.
Authors should select (from the drop-down menu) the special issue title at the appropriate step in the submission process, i.e. in response to “Please select the issue you are submitting to”.
Submitted articles must not have been previously published, nor should they be under consideration for publication anywhere else, while under review for this journal.
Key Deadlines
Opening date for manuscripts submissions: 1st June 2027
Closing date for manuscripts submission: 30th September 2027
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