For many years, supply chain management has been based on a relatively simple assumption: disruptions were temporary deviations from an essentially stable environment.<\/p>\n
On this basis, companies have built global networks focused on efficiency, concentrated production in the most cost-effective countries, reduced inventory, and selected suppliers primarily based on cost, quality, and delivery times.<\/p>\n
That assumption no longer holds true today.<\/p>\n
The World Economic Forum\u2019s *Global Value Chains Outlook 2026*<\/em> and the*Allianz Risk Barometer 2026*<\/em> examine the issue from different perspectives. The former analyzes how global value chains are changing. The latter gathers the perceptions of thousands of risk professionals. Their conclusions converge on one point: volatility is no longer a phase of the economic cycle, but a structural condition within which companies must learn to operate. <\/p>\n The Global Value Chains Outlook 2026<\/em>, produced by the World Economic Forum in collaboration with Kearney, is based on more than 100 consultations with representatives from businesses, institutions, and academia, as well as responses from more than 300 senior executives.<\/p>\n The report identifies a combination of factors that is reshaping supply chains: weak and uneven growth, fragmentation of trade networks, geopolitical instability, rapid technological advancement, and the growing importance of trust and transparency among stakeholders.<\/p>\n These are not isolated disruptions. Tariffs, trade restrictions, industrial policies, conflicts, resource shortages, and new regulatory constraints all interact with one another and can rapidly affect costs, availability, delivery times, and market access. <\/p>\n In this context, optimizing the supply chain for a single expected scenario becomes ineffective. The World Economic Forum proposes replacing the pursuit of maximum efficiency with a model based on structural agility: production and logistics networks designed to be reconfigured when conditions change. <\/p>\n Perhaps the most interesting finding concerns the way in which companies are beginning to view resilience. Seventy-four percent of the business leaders surveyed view it as a growth driver. From this perspective, resilience isn\u2019t just about reducing losses. It can facilitate market access, make investments more reliable, and support the ability to serve customers during periods of instability. <\/p>\n For risk management, this represents a significant change. The configuration of the supply chain is no longer solely an operational decision. It becomes a strategic choice that determines the organization\u2019s risk profile. <\/p>\n The Allianz Risk Barometer 2026<\/em> offers a complementary perspective. The survey gathers the assessments of 3,338 risk management experts from nearly 100 countries and territories. <\/p>\n Business interruption and supply chain disruption rank third among global risks, accounting for 29% of responses. In the previous ten years, business interruption had consistently ranked first or second. However, this drop in the rankings should not automatically be interpreted as a reduction in exposure. <\/p>\n In fact, the report highlights that operational disruptions are often the result of other risks at the top of the list, including cyber incidents, geopolitical instability, regulatory changes, natural disasters, and climate change.<\/p>\n The Italian data is worth noting. In our country, business interruption ranks second, behind cyber risk and ahead of climate change. <\/p>\n Even more significant is the assessment of responsiveness. Among the participants who were asked to evaluate the resilience of their supply chains in the face of geopolitical conflicts, changes in trade flows, and disruptions to critical infrastructure: <\/p>\n The results show that there is still a wide gap between the attention paid to risk and confidence in the measures taken to control it.<\/p>\n A combined reading of the two reports reveals an important insight for business continuity and risk management.<\/p>\n Third-party risk is not simply another item to add to the risk register. It is a mechanism through which known risks can spread, combine, and produce unexpected consequences. <\/p>\n A cyberattack on a service provider can paralyze multiple organizations at the same time. A weather event can disrupt a logistics hub used by seemingly independent suppliers. A trade restriction can make a component unavailable that spans multiple levels of the supply chain. A power outage can simultaneously affect a manufacturing facility, a logistics operator, and a data center. <\/p>\n Formal diversification of suppliers may therefore offer only apparent security. Two different suppliers may depend on the same manufacturer, use the same port, rely on the same cloud provider, or concentrate their production in the same geographic area. <\/p>\n The true unit of analysis is no longer the individual supplier. It is the ecosystem of dependencies required to support a product, service, or critical process. <\/p>\n The top priority is to identify dependencies based on operational criticality, not just on the economic value of the contract. A small supplier may be essential if it provides a component that cannot be replaced or a service necessary to meet a Recovery Time Objective. <\/p>\n The second approach involves extending the mapping beyond the first level. It is not always possible to reconstruct the entire supply chain, but for the most critical products and services, it is necessary to at least identify the main subcontractors, production sites, infrastructure used, and any geographic or technological concentrations. <\/p>\n The third priority is to integrate the supply chain into business continuity plans. These plans should not only account for internal disruptions, but also for supplier failure, disruption of a logistics route, loss of critical infrastructure, or a combination of multiple simultaneous events. <\/p>\n The fourth pertains to contracts and monitoring. For strategic third parties, the clauses should address, at a minimum, incident reporting, business continuity obligations, the use of subcontractors, access to test results, and, where appropriate, the right to conduct audits. <\/p>\n The assessment cannot be limited to the initial due diligence. The risk profile changes along with ownership structures, production sites, technologies, and the geopolitical context. <\/p>\n No organization can predict every disruption. However, it can better understand its dependencies, develop realistic alternatives, and reduce the time needed to make decisions when the situation changes. <\/p>\n Supply chain resilience does not depend solely on the number of available suppliers. It depends on visibility into the relationships that connect them, the quality of information, the ability to quickly reconfigure operations, and the capacity of different business functions to operate as a single system. <\/p>\n Procurement, Risk Management, Business Continuity, IT, Operations, and Legal must share a common understanding of critical dependencies. Without this integration, each function may properly manage its own area but still leave the system as a whole vulnerable. <\/p>\n The structural volatility described by the World Economic Forum and the low level of confidence reported by Allianz indicate that the transition is not yet complete.<\/p>\n The point is not to make the supply chain immune to disruptions. It is to design it so that the organization can continue to operate even when suppliers, infrastructure, and market conditions do not behave as expected. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Supply chain disruptions are no longer occasional events. This article compares the World Economic Forum\u2019s *Global Value Chains Outlook 2026* with the *Allianz Risk Barometer 2026* and identifies four priorities for managing dependencies, critical suppliers, and business interruption scenarios. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":6468,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[46,305],"tags":[311,312,278,274,275,276,313],"class_list":["post-6306","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-en-2","category-resilience-newsletter","tag-allianz-risk-barometer","tag-business-interruption","tag-resilience-management","tag-supply-chain-resilience","tag-supply-chain-risk","tag-third-party-risk-management","tag-world-economic-forum"],"yoast_head":"\nFrom Cost Control to Structural Agility<\/h2>\n
The gap between awareness and actual ability<\/h2>\n
\n
Third-Party Risk as a Multiplier<\/h2>\n
Four Priorities for the Resilience Manager<\/h2>\n
From Forecasting to Adaptability<\/h2>\n