Mitigating Crime Risks in the International Logistics Network:the Case of Swiss Post

The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 raised major concerns about the vulnerability of global transportation systems to transnational crime and terrorism. Although the attacks occurred in the context of passenger transport, they spurred unprecedented academic research on supply chain security (SCS). Alas, today, more than a decade later, theoretical underpinnings of the SCS discipline remain weak. First, the extant SCS literature offers only a cursory and ambiguous view on the risks that SCS management addresses. Second, the academic research offers little evidence of how security solutions affect security and logistics performance. Due to the scarce and conflicting scientific evidence, managers and authorities are having a difficult time securing the supply chain without disrupting trade and logistics operations. This thesis comprises three research phases that seek to address the two crucial weaknesses of the current academic knowledge. The first phase intends to identify and characterize risks that the SCS management addresses and capture them under a unified theoretical frame – a taxonomy of supply chain crimes. The taxonomy results from a study of managerial descriptions of crime problems that occur or could occur in the supply chain context. The second phase aims at producing a research agenda and at isolating principles for logistics-friendly design of security systems through a synthesis of peer-reviewed academic SCS literature. The synthesis is done using the so-called systematic literature review technique, which follows a prescribed and transparent protocol devised to reduce researcher bias and increase transparency of the review process. The third research phase describes the international postal service from the perspective of Swiss Post, putting a special emphasis on postal security management and law enforcement. The later case study analysis tests validity of the supply chain crime taxonomy and aims to generate evidence-based concepts for improving the postal security management. Research findings imply that supply chain crime problems are numerous and diverse, most important being cargo theft, smuggling, and cyber crime. Despite the variety, however, the crime problems collapse into three main taxonomic classes when categorized by the way criminals interact with the supply chain: 1) by taking assets out of the supply chain, 2) by introducing unauthorized goods into the supply chain, and 3) by directly attacking the supply chain. Be