Seeing the whole board: why a sociopolitical lens now matters for supply chains

Tariffs and industrial policy are back in force. Conflicts and security tensions are rerouting sea and air lanes. Legislators are writing due‑diligence rules with real teeth. Consumers are demanding ethical transparency, instantly, and in public. In short, supply chains are being reshaped by politics, society and culture as much as by cost and lead time. A recent synthesis (Golgeci et al., 2025) proposes a sociopolitical view of supply chain management, a perspective that intentionally integrates social, cultural and political forces into end‑to‑end design and decision‑making across macro, meso and micro levels.

A multi‑year text‑mining analysis of company announcements and news coverage shows firms have shifted final assembly and key sub‑tiers from China toward India, Vietnam and Mexico since 2018, driven by tariffs, pandemic policies, and social unrest in factories (Golgeci et al., 2025). Apple’s rebalancing of iPhone assembly to India and Vietnam is emblematic of this broader pattern. Meanwhile, Chinese suppliers themselves have been relocating to Mexico and Southeast Asia to maintain access to the U.S. market. The net effect for many Western brands is longer, more complex networks with shadow dependencies hidden in deep tiers, harder to see, harder to govern.

Policy is a prime mover. The U.S. CHIPS and Science Act and the EU’s semiconductor initiatives are pulling advanced manufacturing into new geographies; export controls and countersanctions are simultaneously pushing against those flows. These state interventions are not “background noise”, they are redesigning where capacity sits and which suppliers can touch which technologies.

Societal forces bite as well. Allegations of labour exploitation, modern‑slavery
concerns, and viral videos of poor working conditions have triggered boycotts
and rapid supplier exits. Brands that once optimized for efficiency alone are now optimizing for legitimacy, a different calculus with different data needs.

For practitioners, this lens reframes three fundamentals:

1.     Governance beyond contracts. Traditional cost‑and‑compliance playbooks are necessary but insufficient. Governance now includes navigating power asymmetries (states, platforms, lead firms), layered regulations (national laws, trade blocs, industry codes) and civil‑society scrutiny. Expect to negotiate not just prices and specs, but permissions to operate across overlapping regulatory systems.

2.     Culture and society as design inputs. Social norms, labour politics and national sentiment shape supplier behaviour, worker availability and collaboration. They are not “soft” factors—they determine whether a network
can execute under stress.

3.     Risk as geopolitically constituted. Reshoring, friend‑shoring and China+1 strategies reduce some exposure but can increase complexity and reduce visibility in sub‑tiers. Mapping, monitoring and governing those deep tiers is now strategic, not optional.

Five moves to make now

1.     Build a geopolitics “early‑warning” routine. Pair horizon scanning (policy calendars, election cycles, sanctions updates)
with scenario planning tied to concrete supply options and cost‑to‑serve
impacts. Treat this as a monthly management rhythm, not an annual exercise.

2.     Map for shadow dependencies. Go beyond tier‑1: identify country‑of‑origin, ownership links and technology chokepoints in sub‑tiers.
Prioritise categories exposed to export controls (chips, advanced materials)
and to social‑license risk (apparel, agriculture).

3.     Design dual responses, relationship and rule‑based. Where feasible, de‑risk by diversification (dual/triple sourcing, regional options). In parallel,
uplift rule‑based controls: due‑diligence procedures, auditability, and digital
traceability to withstand regulatory and public scrutiny.

4.     Invest in cultural and social intelligence. Equip boundary spanners and category teams with country‑specific labour, regulatory and cultural fluency. This strengthens collaboration under pressure and reduces missteps that can escalate into online crises.

5.     Work at the meso level. Join (or form) industry coalitions to co‑invest in visibility platforms, shared contingency capacity and common standards, especially in sectors where NZ firms are price‑takers in global networks (agri‑food, electronics, healthcare). Collective action lowers the cost of compliance and increases bargaining power.

New Zealand’s distance, concentration of exports, and reliance on a few transport corridors magnify sociopolitical shocks. Yet they also make NZ an ideal testbed for multi‑level governance: aligning macro intelligence (trade and security), meso collaboration (industry platforms) and micro execution (supplier development, dual sourcing). Organisations that adopt this sociopolitical view will not just weather the turbulence, they will re‑architect their supply chains for strategic advantage in a world where permission, legitimacy and resilience are competitive capabilities.

This article draws on “Advancing the sociopolitical view of supply chain management,” which synthesises global evidence and proposes a multi‑level framework for managers and policymakers.

Reference

Golgeci, I., Roscoe, S., Gligor, D. M., & Oh, C. H. (2025). Advancing the sociopolitical view of supply chain management. International Journal of Operations & Production Management, 45(5), 955-984.