Ghost written for Warwick Business School’s Core Insights publication September 2025 (this is an example of work I have been doing for WBS since 2019).
How ‘small worldness’ can mitigate supply chain risks.
The collapse of the Rana Plaza building in Bangladesh remains one of the biggest supply chain scandals ever to hit multinational companies.
The disaster in April 2013 killed 1,132 people and maimed more than 2,500 others.
Many were workers in five clothes factories that served well-known high street retailers.
As a result, the tragedy became a symbol of the fashion industry’s failure to ensure high standards across its growing supply chains, causing long-term reputational damage and having a significant impact on sales.
However, the issue of Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) scandals in global supply chains is not confined to the fashion industry.
Many pharmaceutical companies rely on generic drug shipments from India, where suppliers have been involved in water quality scandals.
Child labour and modern slavery remain risks across a range of products and countries.
Quality issues – such as a recent contaminated eye drop scandal affecting consumers in the US – have also raised governance concerns.
Small worldness: going back to the village
As globalisation continues, supply chains are becoming ever more complex. While this complexity can improve cost efficiency and innovation, it also makes it more difficult to manage those supply chains effectively and maintaining ESG standard.
On top of this, scrutiny of firms’ sustainability credentials is increasing, driven by consumers, investors, and (in most cases) governments.
As the issue gains attention, multi-nationals are increasingly seeking solutions to rising ESG supply chain risks. According to our research, one solution to these ESG risks may be to increase ‘small worldness’ in multinational supply chains.
This involves a network structure where companies are closely connected – in the same way as individuals in a close-knit village – enabling better oversight, sharing of information, and enforcement of social and environmental norms.
Our findings show that small world networks are key to improving control for multinational firms, making it easier to monitor and regulate supplier behaviour and ensure more ethical supply chains to reduce the ESG risks involved.
Dense connections.
A company’s level of ‘connectedness’ is key to a a successful, small world approach.
The better connected a company is, the better placed it is to identify potential ESG issues and tackle them.
When all buyers and suppliers in an industry know each other well, news of questionable behaviour can spread quickly throughout the neighbourhood – similar to the way that news travels around a village.
Negative news does not normally come directly from the guilty party, but spreads indirectly through that network. So, a company planning to buy from a new supplier should seek information about them from other companies that have already have connections to the supplier – as well as from the supplier itself.
Companies can then either avoid risky suppliers or work together to control the behaviour of the supplier – delivering a form of social or network-based governance, while overcoming some of the limitations inherent in their contractual terms.
However, buyers must be careful to avoid collusion, maintaining a delicate balance between competing with fellow multinationals and ensuring high ESG standards from suppliers.
Degrees of separation.
On the other side of the equation is the degree of separation between the buyer and the supplier.
A small world approach would involve reducing this to as few intermediaries as possible.
Companies with high levels of ‘small-worldness have relatively few degrees of separation between them, and so fewer steps to suppliers. Our research showed US companies averaged around 4/5 degrees of separation – those below this level have relatively high small worldness.
Bringing these two factors together, the density of a buyer and supplier’s connections (numerator), over the number of steps between firms (denominator) gives a single measure for small worldness.
When firms have a high connection density and a low degree of separation, it resembles an environment where we typically say, “yeah, it’s a small world!”
Practical advice for companies
Our research recommends three distinct approaches to increase connection density:
1. Create direct relations with suppliers of suppliers.
2. Promote connections between suppliers.
3. When selecting new suppliers, they should choose one that already has connections with their customers or existing suppliers, so the network density is increased.
The number of companies in the supply chain can also be cut, but this must be balanced against the advantages of the structure. However, multinationals can reduce the impact of degrees of separation by creating supply chain ties with firms that have high levels of connectivity themselves.
In practise, multinational employees need to keep their ear to the ground and maintain close connections with others in their industry. Employees must go out and meet people, including competitors and potential suppliers. Good relationships with those involved means a smoother flow of information.
Procurement managers should attend networking events or create their own to make connections stronger. For example, pharma giant, Baer, has regular annual events to invite suppliers and make awards. Information flow is enhanced when people know each other and meet in person more frequently.
A broader relationship between companies can also improve connections. For example, if they develop a product together, connections are extended into the engineering/R&D and marketing departments, as well as sales and procurement. The best-connected buyers/suppliers have multiple layers of connection.
Return to Rana
Many retailers in the US and Europe did not know about Rana Plaza because they contracted out to a supply chain company, which in turn dealt independently with local producers around the world, one of which was Rana Plaza. The intermediary was able to quickly allocate production, which individual retailers (or suppliers) could not do as efficiently, but it also separated buyers from suppliers.
Small-worldness can lessen this separation by improving communication and coordination among companies involved, while maintaining the advantages of global supply chains.
After the event, many companies decided not to source from Bangladesh, but they were steadily drawn back by the country’s production advantages. To remove the risk of a similar event happening again they check conditions closely and require companies to meet safety standards – with a smaller world network structure facilitating more stringent oversight.