Breaking out of the pandemic: How can firms match internal competence with external resources to shape operational resilience?

Abstract

This study explores how firms sought to effectively match their internal competence with external resources from the supply chain network to improve operational resilience (OR) during the COVID‐19 pandemic. Drawing upon matching theory, this study provides an internal–external matching perspective based on flexibility–stability features of OR to explain the operational mechanisms underlying the different matchings between internal flexibility (i.e., product diversity)/stability (i.e., operational efficiency) and external flexibility (i.e., structural holes)/stability (i.e., network centrality). We find that more heterogeneous matchings between internal (external) flexibility and external (internal) stability have a complementary effect that enhances OR, whereas more homogeneous matchings between internal flexibility (or stability) and external flexibility (or stability) have a substitutive effect that reduces OR. This study provides valuable contributions to research focusing on the supply chain, organizational resilience, and operations management.

Industry 4.0 technology capabilities, resilience and incremental innovation in Australian manufacturing firms: a serial mediation model

“…The speed of recovery requires a high level of adaptability in response to the changing external environment and reconfiguration of internal resources through incremental innovations to internal processes and systems. As Li et al (2022) suggested, digital technologies that are implemented for internal process efficiency create an internal environment conducive to any innovation plans; internal stability and supply chain flexibility are complementary for innovation plans leading to operations resilience.…”

“…Operations resilience is a firm’s ability to return to the original state of operations after a disruption and requires operations to be stable and flexible (Essuman et al , 2020; Li et al , 2022). Firms must recover and persist in their operations during and after disruptions, such as rapid and effective restoration of operations is required for firms to remain competitive (Munoz and Dunbar, 2015; Zhao et al , 2022).…”

Product availability and stockpiling in times of pandemic: causes of supply chain disruptions and preventive measures in retailing

“…High product diversity together with the central position in the supply chain helped improve the operational resilience of some companies during the COVID-19 pandemic (Li et al, 2022 ). However, the revealed benefits of substitution do not always imply increasing product variety or capacity.…”

The effect of customer and supplier concentrations on firm resilience during the COVID‐19 pandemic: Resource dependence and power balancing

“…One common objective way to measure resilience is to assess the changes that resilience evokes in other performance outcomes (DesJardine et al, 2019). For example, scholars have used changes in stock price (DesJardine et al, 2019; Sajko et al, 2021), profitability (Dimitriadis, 2021; Lin et al, 2021; Ortiz‐de‐Mandojana & Bansal, 2016), operating avenue (Ge et al, 2022; Li et al, 2022), and inventory (Lin et al, 2021) to measure a firm's resilience in the face of a crisis. An emerging stream of literature has begun to measure resilience from the perspective of production function (Dohale et al, 2022; Dormady et al, 2019), which depicts the efficiency and effectiveness of firms' efforts to configure the combination of inputs to obtain production targets or maximize profits (Rose, 2004).…”