Governance Surveys
Directorship Magazine
2025 Private Company Board Practices and Oversight Survey
Survey Analysis: Supply Chain
Discover findings from the NACD 2025 Private Company Board Practices and Oversight Survey related to the board’s oversight of issues related to their organization’s supply chain. The data was gathered from directors and others who serve the boards of privately held companies. Access the full survey here.
Key Insights
Supply chain challenges are predicted to remain high for the next 12 months. In response, companies are focusing on managing supply chain exposures, ensuring supply chain resiliency, and regulatory and compliance management. These are the top three focus areas noted by private company respondents to the 2025 Board Practices and Oversight Survey. Rounding out the top five are ensuring strategic alignment and bolstering supply chain cybersecurity.
Supply Chain Focus Areas
(Top 10 Shown)
Q; Which aspects of the supply chain are a current focus for your organization? (Select all that apply.)
Source: 2025 Private Company Board Practices and Oversight Survey, n=86
Supply chain challenges are not expected to slow over the next year. More than 58 percent of respondents expect their organization’s exposure to supply chain risks to be higher in the next 12 months, and nearly 40 percent expect the same level of risk exposure. Given this uncertainty, most private companies are not currently focusing on significant shifts and investments in supply chain reorientation such as onshoring or near-shoring: just 8 percent noted a focus on that area.
A Challenging Supply Chain Outlook
Private company respondents that expect their organization's
exposure to supply chain risks to be lower over the next 12 months
In this context, approximately 40 percent of respondents are only moderately or slightly confident of management’s ability to deal with supply chain challenges. Further, fewer than half of respondents are confident that the board has the right metrics for visibility into supply chain resilience and innovation.
Do you feel the board has the right metrics for effective visibility into supply chain resilience and innovation?
Source: 2025 Private Company Board Practices and Oversight Survey, n=85
Why It Matters
The data suggests that organizations are focusing on areas that enable companies to adapt their supply chain in the face of rapidly shifting trade policy landscapes and an uncertain economic outlook for the rest of 2025.
However, the data also suggests that organizations are not focused on innovations within the supply chain that could help to build resilience and flexibility over the long term. Innovations could also help companies tackle the issue of talent alignment and availability, which nearly 20 percent of private companies are focused on.
What Boards Should Do
In this uncertain environment, boards can focus on helping the senior management team ensure that current initiatives add to overall supply chain resilience and flexibility.
Discussions, metrics, and analytics from management teams should highlight resilience factors such as the organization’s overall capacity to adjust suppliers; to readily assess its supply chain’s overall exposure to shifting tariff regimes and to explore alternative suppliers; to take an overview of impacts on pricing and margins and whether or how these can be mitigated; and to assess how risk mitigation responses align with the organization’s overall strategy. Boards can also keep a strong focus and support on mid- to longer-term innovation initiatives, such as generative artificial intelligence tools that could help strengthen management’s ability to deal with supply chain challenges.
Explore more related data below, or return to the 2025 NACD Private Company Board Practices and Oversight Survey.
Data Pack
