Two perspectives on supply chain resilience

Abstract

More than a decade ago, other fields started to challenge the equilibrium-focused meaning of resilience. They suggested that resilience does not just relate to the ability of a system to "bounce back" after an impeding event, but also to the capacity to adapt and transform. The operations and supply chain management literature remains surprisingly disconnected from these debates. This essay sets out to further our theoretical knowledge of what resilience means (or means to others) by disentangling two prominent perspectives of resilience-engineering resilience and social-ecological resilience-and offering an updated definition of supply chain resilience. We integrate and discuss these perspectives in the context of our understanding of the supply chain as a system. The goal is to outline the potential links and inconsistencies of these perspectives with supply chain management (SCM). From there, we seek to develop a more comprehensive understanding of what resilience means in SCM. Supply chain resilience is then no longer understood in terms of stability, but in terms of adaptation and transformation.

Effect of Supply Chain Resilience on Organizational Performance through Knowledge Sharing

“…The role of SCR in performance and different viewpoints on SCR give scholars motivation to explore the possible role SCR can play in organizational performance and its significance to those organizations who are working in the uncertain and volatile market environment. However, we foresee SCR as a skill and knowledge (Wieland & Durach, 2021). According to previous studies, resilience helps organizations take vigorous, customized, and situation-specific actions whenever an unhealthy event occurs that can harm the firm's existence in a long run.…”

New perspectives on supply chain resilience

“…A primary difference, however, is that the authors cast transilience within the context of pandemics, which they assert is distinctly different than typical supply chain disruptions. Similarly, however, Wieland and Durach (2021) note that transformational adaptations are often needed in light of political, economic, or cultural crises that arise outside of the supply chain but affect its ability to function. In teasing out these perspectives and conceptualizations of resilience, it could be insightful to put more emphasis on the salience and scope of disruptive events.…”

“…The opening manuscript of this issue, “Two Perspectives on Supply Chain Resilience,” by Wieland and Durach (2021), builds on current conceptualizations of resilience and offers an interdisciplinary understanding. They contrast these two prominent perspectives views of resilience, the engineering and ecological perspectives (Holling, 1996), and they extend the ecological view to propose a social –ecological perspective to include the influence of social actors.…”

“…Even when referring to supply chain resilience as the ability of the firm to adapt or reconfigure the structure of the supply chain in light of a disruption (Ambulkar et al 2015; Dolgui et al, 2018; Iyengar et al, 2021; Pettit et al, 2019; Wiedmer et al, 2021), resilience is a firm‐level phenomenon. But if we take, for example, an automanufacturer producing ventilators during the pandemic (Wieland & Durach, 2021), how could this have impacted the resilience of the manufacturer's upstream suppliers and downstream customers (i.e., dealers)? More pointedly, in the decision to shift to ventilator production, to what extent did the automanufacturer consider the resilience of its suppliers and customers?…”

“…Another area of research related to this study is how resilience may reflect the ability to temporarily adapt or reconfigure its supply chain when faced with a disruption, but then "bounce back" when conditions allow. Wieland and Durach (2021) offered excellent examples of this when they highlighted how a juice producer manufactured hand sanitizer and a garment company shifted to mask production during the pandemic. Although some adaptations in these supply chains may have been permanent, it is certain that there was also a “bounce back” to pre‐pandemic operations when those temporary market needs were met.…”