Call For Abstracts

Supply chains form the core of modern economies, enabling the production of almost all complex goods. Supply chains of single firms are highly intertwined, forming complex and dynamically evolving supply chain networks (SCNs).  The complexity of SCNs, lean management strategies of firms, and large crises (e.g., COVID-19 and the war in Ukraine), made them vulnerable to disruptions that can quickly spread through the network. Supply chain risk has been recognized as a major business concern across various industries and has become a priority for many governments. The ongoing climate crisis and heightened geopolitical instability are anticipated to further amplify these challenges, while better understanding SCNs is a crucial component to develop solutions to these challenges.

While the study of production networks at the level of sectors dates back to the 1930s with the work of Wassily Leontief, only recent improvements in data availability have enabled scientists to study large scale firm-level SCNs. Previous research has been dispersed across various disciplines, from Manufacturing Engineering and Supply Chain Management to Macroeconomics. However, to effectively address current, systemic challenges, the models for describing the supply chains of individual firms alone are not comprehensive enough, whereas traditional macroeconomic models are too abstract and far from the data.

Network science provides the ideal tools to develop new models based on detailed, firm-level data that take into account realistic firm behavior and can also operate at a large scale, allowing for new insights that are complementary to existing approaches in economics and supply chain management. The goal of the FLSCN NetSci satellite is to explore the most recent advancements in the rapidly growing field of firm-level supply networks. The FLSCN will bring together researchers who are working on SCNs in various disciplines, and popularize this exciting emerging topic in the network science community. We want to encourage scientists across disciplines to investigate these networks with the newest tools from network science, and create opportunities for new and productive collaborations.

Topics for contributions. We invite you to submit a one page abstract (incl. one figure) of recently published (no older than 2024) or unpublished work on, but not limited to the following topics:

• Reconstruction of firm-level supply networks

• Topology of firm-level supply networks incl. temporal network measures

• Formation processes of firm-level supply networks

• Behavior of firms in supply chain formation

• Economic shock spreading in firm-level supply networks

• Theoretical models of firm-level supply chain networks

• Practical applications of models calibrated on firm-level supply networks data

• Work on other granular agent-level supply or production networks (e.g., shipping networks, inter-firm credit,...)