Survey Analysis: Supply Chain

Discover findings from NACD’s 2025 Public Company Board Practices and Oversight Survey about the board’s oversight of issues related to their company’s supply chain. The data was gathered from directors and others who serve the boards of publicly traded companies. Access the full survey here.

Key Insights

Faced with an uncertain trade policy outlook and associated economic impacts, companies are focusing on managing supply chain exposures (58%), bolstering their supply chain resiliency (56%), and addressing regulatory and compliance management (42%). These are the top 3 supply chain focus areas noted by public company respondents to the 2025 Board Practices and Oversight Survey. Rounding out the top five are “supply chain cybersecurity” (26%) and “supplier strategy” (26%).

Which aspects of the supply chain are a current focus for your organization?
Respondents could select all that apply.

2025 Public Company Board Practices and Oversight Survey, n=164

The current focus on supply chains is a marked shift from 12 months ago, when the NACD Q2 2024 quarterly survey found that supply chain disruptions were ranked 13th in terms of the top business issues on boards’ agendas. The Q2 2025 Quarterly Survey found supply chain issues to be among the top five issues.

Supply chain challenges are not expected to decrease. More than half (56%) of respondents expect their organization’s exposure to supply chain risks to be higher in the next 12 months, while 40 percent expect the exposure to be about the same.

Respondents that expect their organization's exposure to supply
chain risks to be higher in the next 12 months

Despite these challenges, two-thirds (64%) of the responding public company directors are “very” or “extremely” confident of management’s ability to deal with supply chain challenges. But that leaves one-third (34%) who are only “moderately” or “slightly” confident of management’s ability (and less than 2% who are “not confident at all”).

Why It Matters

The five supply chain areas that companies are currently focused on can be viewed as shorter term, “no regret” moves as companies adapt to a rapidly shifting trade policy landscape playing out against a backdrop of other potential supply chain disruptions such as geopolitical conflicts, related cybersecurity events, or extreme weather disruptions. Crafting responses to proposed or actual shifts in tariff regimes, by both the United States and its trading partners, requires significant alignment and complex analysis across procurement, tax, compliance, and other functions. The uncertain financial impacts of these changes have reached a point where it can be hard for companies to provide shareholder guidance beyond the next 90 days.

The data also show where companies are not focused. Significant shifts and investments in supply chain reorientation such as “onshoring” or “nearshoring” are not yet a response strategy for most public companies. Just 15 percent noted their focus on that area. Micro-cap companies (less than $300 million) are an exception, with nearly a third focusing on supply chain reorientation. These companies also have a greater focus on supplier strategy and strategic alignment compared to larger companies. This may reflect that the smaller companies may have less bargaining power to negotiate prices with suppliers or less capacity to shift among suppliers in different countries with varying tariff regimes.

Further, despite the critical role of innovation in building adaptive supply chains, only 12 percent of boards are currently focused on emerging technologies like AI, blockchain, or digital twins. Even fewer (3%) report investing in and/or experimenting with the circular economy. Along with this, half (50%) of respondents note “No” or “Not sure” to the question on whether 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?

2025 Public Company Board Practices and Oversight Survey, n=163

What Boards Should Do

Boards can help the senior management team to maintain a focus on mid- and long-term supply chain goals and strategy alignment amid current uncertainty. Boards can take three steps in support of this: (1) review management’s reports to consider whether supply chain metrics and analytics track resiliency, (2) explore whether management faces any barriers to readily access supply chain data necessary for robust and agile decision making and how these barriers can be addressed, and (3) prioritize a focus on supply chain innovations that can help future-proof supply chains.

Explore more related data below, or return to the 2025 NACD Public Company Board Practices and Oversight Survey.