Securing Denmark’s Critical Supply Chains in an Era of Polycrisis

In his talk, Securing Denmark’s Critical Supply, Leon Iden presented findings from his ethnographic research with SAMSIK, exploring how organizations plan for resilience in critical supply chains. His work explores how institutions interpret past crises, read shifting global signals, and anticipate trajectories that could give rise to future disruptions.

Joining him on stage was Søren Jepsen, Chief Advisor for Emergency Preparedness and Supply Security at SAMSIK, who shared practical insights into how Denmark’s national resilience agency works to safeguard essential supplies in an environment increasingly shaped by geopolitical uncertainty.

The presentation highlighted that traditional risk management, once largely reactive, is being reshaped. With new data, technologies, and global complexity, risk management is shifting toward more proactive and anticipatory forms of organization. This transformation is especially urgent in today’s era of polycrisis, where multiple, overlapping shocks, from climate change to market volatility and geopolitical conflict, intersect to challenge national and supply chain security.

“Against this backdrop of a global polycrisis, we should also think of resilience as interconnected, spanning systems and levels,” Leon noted, while also highlighting the challenges involved in managing it. Moving toward resilience, we start engaging more with the causes of disruptions. This makes resilience an increasingly complex task, as the boundaries of what we can control begin to blur. We need to consider how crises unfold over time and how short-term measures shape, and sometimes constrain, our capacity to adapt to emerging transformations. 

Leon’s research, carried out in close partnership with the Danish Resilience Agency and the Danish Critical Resource Agency, explores these evolving practices in resilience management. By examining how resilience is conceptualized and put into practice across organizational, supply chain, and national levels, the project aims to better understand how societies anticipate, govern, and adapt to crises in a world of growing interdependence and instability.

The discussion underscored a key message: in an unpredictable global environment, Denmark’s ability to secure critical supply will depend not only on technical solutions, but also on how resilience is understood and practiced across all levels of society.