The 4Rs supply chain resilience framework: A capability perspective

Abstract

During the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID‐19) pandemic, the demand and supply for many products fluctuated. Thus, many companies around the globe have repurposed their operations and reconfigured their supply chains (SCs) to switch production and produce new products. Literature provided various models and frameworks to explain the concepts of supply chain resilience. However, it remains unclear how companies could quickly and temporarily repurpose their SCs and what are the required capabilities during the COVID‐19 crisis. Therefore, this study investigates the role of developing dynamic capabilities such as manufacturing, logistics, production capacity and procurement in facilitating production changeover. Based on 36 semistructured interviews conducted with multinational corporations, the study findings demonstrate four specific capabilities known as the 4Rs: retooling, repurposing, recalibrating and reconfiguring. Hence, the study provides a conceptual framework of operational resilience to understand how production changeover could be achieved. In addition, this 4Rs framework helps decision‐makers to improve SC resilience and capabilities when facing a crisis such as COVID‐19.

Mitigating the “Cobra Effect” when pursuing organizational resilience

“…According to Duchek (2020), although these resilience strategies may help an organization deal with short‐term disruptions, they can also create vulnerabilities if the organization becomes too reliant on them and lacks the flexibility to adapt to changing circumstances. Compromised values: according to Das et al (2022), in the pursuit of resilience, an organization may prioritize practical considerations over its values and principles, leading to unethical or questionable decision‐making that may damage the organization's reputation and credibility in the long run. Fragile relationships: according to Williams et al (2017), building resilience often involves creating strong relationships with suppliers, partners and other stakeholders. However, if these relationships are not carefully managed, they can create dependencies that may make the organization more vulnerable to disruptions. Short‐term focus: Dwaikat et al (2022) argue that organizations may prioritize short‐term gains and quick fixes in the name of resilience at the expense of long‐term sustainability. An organization is prioritizing resilience but misunderstands that resilience has to be a balance between short‐term and long‐term.…”

“…The unintended consequences of the lack of organizational resilience conceptualization include poor execution, alignment and strategic goal achievement (Stoverink et al, 2020). In the literature, there are three types of conceptualizations of resilience: those that regard (1) resilience as a result (Duchek, 2020) and those who view, (2) resilience as a capability (Ma et al, 2018; Williams et al, 2017) and those who describe (3) resilience as a process and organizational practices (Assaad & El‐adaway, 2021; Barasa et al, 2018; Dwaikat et al, 2022; Hillmann & Guenther, 2021; Ruiz‐Martin et al, 2018). For example, Duchek (2020) viewed organizational resilience as an outcome.…”

“…But first, an organization must work on a set of clearly identified practices to achieve this capacity. Some of these, for example, include investing in dynamic capability (Jiang et al, 2019; Ma et al, 2018), risk management (Al‐Abrrow et al, 2019), knowledge management (Umar et al, 2021), innovation and continuous improvement (Zighan & Ruel, 2021), business continuity (Burnard & Bhamra, 2019), agility (Miceli et al, 2021), entrepreneurial orientation (Zighan et al, 2022), digitalization (Schniederjans et al, 2020), contingency management (Jung & Song, 2015); absorptive capacity (Gölgeci & Kuivalainen, 2020), coping capability (Vakilzadeh & Haase, 2020), anticipation capability (Duchek, 2020), retooling, repurposing, reconfiguring and recalibrating capabilities (Dwaikat et al, 2022). Nevertheless, other studies emphasize that organizational resilience implies a broader approach than capability and requires long‐term vision, practice, discipline and commitment (Andersson et al, 2019; Holbeche, 2019; Jiang et al, 2019).…”

Pandemic publishing: A bibliometric review of COVID‐19 research in the crisis and disaster literature

“…The well‐versed crisis scholars will recognize that these topics are well‐known within the crisis management literature, but often discussed separately by different communities of researchers. The COVID‐19 studies that focus on resilience illustrate this, as in the individual articles, resilience is studied at different levels, ranging from specific organizations, supply chain logistics, and broader disaster response systems (Dwaikat et al, 2022 ; de La Garza & Lot, 2022 ). The studies discuss the necessity of developing dynamic capabilities in logistics and production capacity, recalibrating and reconfiguring operations, as well as the importance of emotions as an intrinsic element of resilience during pandemic governance.…”

Antecedents and outcomes of supply chain resilience: Integrating dynamic capabilities and relational perspective

“…dynamic capabilities often require enterprises to collaborate with upstream suppliers and downstream distributors through the continuous adjustment of the organization's internal production plan, organizational structure and external relationship network to coordinate with other links in the supply chain to adapt to the ever‐changing environment and demand. Thus, it can be seen that both the enterprise and its supply chain need dynamic capabilities to adapt to changes, predict environmental trends, respond quickly to changes, reconfigure resources to recover from changes and dynamically adjust the elements, processes and structure of the entire network, to cope with the fluctuations of the environment and the uncertainties of daily operations (Dwaikat et al, 2022). In this article, sensing capability, seizing capability and reconfiguring capability are considered antecedents of supply chain resilience from dynamic capabilities perspective combined with the sensing ability, quick response and quick recovery capabilities reflected in supply chain resilience in the pre‐, mid‐ and post‐disruption stages.…”