Supply Chain Capabilities, Risks, and Resilience

Supply chain resilience is an operational capability that enables a disrupted or broken supply chain to reconstruct itself and be stronger than before. This paper examines resilience using the dynamic capabilities approach, grounded in the Resource-Based View of firms. The purpose of this research is to provide insights for achieving resilience by mapping the relationships between the practices, resources, and processes over which a manager has control. A survey of 171 managers is used to test a conceptual model that proposes relationship between supply chain capabilities and resilience as well as the moderating role of supply chain risks. Variance-based structural equation modeling reveals that only tighter integration between echelons and increasing flexibility lead to added resilience. The perception of supplier risk helps motivate the supply chain manager to enhance integration capabilities and thus achieve higher resilience. Furthermore, the perception of external risks to a supply chain actually reduces the effort of deploying external capabilities to obtain resilience. Overall, the findings strongly support the view that resources, routines, and capabilities provide different results in terms of resilience depending upon supply chain risk factors.