An integrated model of supply chain resilience and its impact on supply chain performance under disruption

• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1108/IJLM-03-2021-0174
• Published date: 04 August 2021
• Date: 04 August 2021
• Pages: 339-364
• Subject Matter: Management science & operations,Logistics
• Author: Shih-Jung Juan,Eldon Y. Li,Wei-Hsi Hung

An integrated model of supply

chain resilience and its impact on

supply chain performance

under disruption

Shih-Jung Juan

Management Information Systems, College of Commerce,

National Chengchi University, Taipei, Taiwan

Eldon Y. Li

Information Management, College of Management,

National Chung Cheng University, Minhsiung, Taiwan and

Marketing, Tongji University, Shanghai, China, and

Wei-Hsi Hung

Management Information Systems, College of Commerce,

National Chengchi University, Taipei, Taiwan

Abstract

Purpose –This study aims to explore the relationships among the five components of supply chain (SC)

resilience (SCRES): visibility, velocity, flexibility, robustness and collaboration and their impacts on the SC

performance under disruption (SCPUD).

Design/methodology/approach –Five SCRES components are identified from the literature review and

data are collected using an web survey from 113 manufacturing companies in Taiwan. The data are analyzed

by structured equation modeling with the partial least square solution. Two-stage least-squares (2SLS)

regression was used to test the potential endogeneity of SC collaboration (SCC).

Findings –The resultsreveal that SCC is an exogenous driverof SCRES; it directly affectsvisibility, velocity,

flexibility,robustness and SCPUD. Furthermore,SC flexibility is the only component of SC agilitythat directly

affects SCPUD; itis influenced directly by SC velocityand indirectly by SC visibility through SC velocity. SC

visibilityis a vital agilitycomponent that positively influencesSC velocity and SC robustness.

Research limitations/implications–The data in this study are cross-sectional and the sample size of 113 is

relatively small. The relationship between SC robustness and SCPUD needs a longer observation period to

reveal. The logistic issue in the shortage of carriers caused by the pandemic has been overlooked.

Practical implications–A firm should enhance its collaboration and flexibility in the SC as they both are the

critical antecedents of SC performance (SCP) during the disruption period.

Originality/value –This study integrates visibility, velocity, flexibility, robustness and collaboration into a

complete framework of SCRES. The dependent variable, SCPUD, measures SC performance (SCP) under the

Supply chain

resilience and

performance

339

This research was partially supported by the Ministry of Science and Technology in Taiwan (Grant Nos.

108-2410-H-004-205 and 108-2410-H-194-106-MY3). The authors give special thanks to Prof. Woo-Tsong

Lin of Department of Management Information Systems at National Chengchi University in Taiwan for

his kind assistance in providing constructive review comments.

Author credit statement: Shih-Jung Juan: Conceptualization, methodology, software, formal analysis,

validation, investigation, data curation, writing-origi nal draft. Eldon Y. Li: Conceptual ization,

methodology, formal analysis, validation, writing-review and editing, visualization. Wei-Hsi Hung:

Supervision, project administration, funding acquisition, writing-review.

Declarations of interest: None

Submission declaration and verification: The authors formally declare that at least two-third of the

content in this paper has been changed from the original work of themselves, which was published

previously in IEEE ICIEA 2020 conference. It is not being reviewed by any editorial office of publishers.

All cited materials have been properly credited with citations in the contexts and the References section.

The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:

https://www.emerald.com/insight/0957-4093.htm

Received 25 March 2021

Revised 31 May 2021

Accepted 19 July 2021

The International Journal of

Logistics Management

Vol. 33 No. 1, 2022

pp. 339-364

© Emerald Publishing Limited

0957-4093

DOI 10.1108/IJLM-03-2021-0174

disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. It is the first study to investigate the associations of the six

constructs in a research model.

Keywords Supply chain resilience, Agility, Collaboration, Flexibility, Robustness, Performance under

disruption

Paper type Research paper

1. Introduction

Owing to the outbreak of COVID-19 in 2020, many countries locked down cities and borders,

impeding the movement of people and goods by air, land or water. Corporate offices and

factories must shut down temporarily because of the lack of workforce, causing disruptions

in 86% of global supply chains (SCs) (Van Hoek, 2020). These disruptions make SC resilience

(SCRES) a critical strategy of sustainability (Ivanov, 2021).

Before the pandemic, many scholars have paidattentiontoSCRESandhaveextensively

studied it from different perspectives. A scrutiny of the extant literature reveals that the

significant disparity in the formative elements needed to secure the adaptive capability of

resilience (J€

uttner and Maklan, 2011;Petitt et al., 2010). According to Scholten et al. (2014),

SC (re-)engineering, collaboration, agility, risk awarenessand knowledge management are

the formative elements of SCRES. Furthermore, characteristics such as flexibility, velocity,

visibility and collaboration may be considered as SCRES antecedents, rather than

formativeelements(e.g.Mandal et al., 2016). Ali et al. (2017) indicate a lack of clarity on the

relationships between these elements of SCRES. Our research aims to fill these

research gaps.

This study proposes an integrated research model incorporating the concept of SCRES.

Previously, many scholars have considered visibility, velocity, flexibility, robustness and

collaboration as the five most common components of SCRES (Christopher and Peck, 2004;

Ponomarov and Holcomb, 2009;J€

uttner and Maklan, 2011;Wieland and Wallenburg, 2013).

Among them, visibility, velocity and flexibility are identified as agility components (J€

uttner

and Maklan, 2011). Mackay et al. (2020) distinguish robustness and flexibility as proactive

absorptive capabilities and reactive adaptive capabilities, respectively. While robustness can

resist or avoid changes, flexibility can reconfigure SC operations and adapt to changes.

Regarding the impact of SCRES on performance, several studies confirm that SC agility

(Chan et al., 2017), collaboration (Wu et al., 2014;Pradabwong et al., 2017) and robustness

(Wieland and Wallenburg, 2012) positively affect a firm’s business performance. Besides

these studies, the extant literature is scarce, especially regarding how SCRES affects SC’s

performance during pandemic disruptions. As such, this study aims to fill this gap by

integrating the five common components (i.e. visibility, velocity, flexibility, robustness and

collaboration) as a surrogate of SCRES and exploring their relationships with each other and

with the SC performance under disruption (SCPUD). The study contributes to the extant

knowledge of SCRES and how to build SCRES capabilities to achieve better SCPUD,

especially in the pandemic disruption caused by COVID-19. On the one hand, knowing the

interplay between the formative components of SCRES can realize their roles in SCRES, thus

helping practitioners increase the comprehensive SCRES capabilities. On the other hand,

understanding the effects of the formative components of SCRES on SCPUD can illustrate

which component(s) can increase SCPUD. This study helps firms facing pandemic risks

understand the way some resilient practices may improve SC performance (SCP).

The remainder of this paper is organized as follows. The next sections introduce the

literature review in Section 2 and hypotheses development in Section 3, followed by the

research method in Section 4. The results of data analyses and discussion are described in

Section 5. Finally, Section 6 presents theoretical contributions, practical implications,

research limitations and future work.

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