Enhanced supply chain resilience in global supply chains: a multi-dimensional capability framework

Abstract

Global supply chain interdependencies increase firm’s disruption exposure, intensifying scholarly and managerial interest in resilience. Despite previously identified resilience activities, limited understanding exists of how capabilities are developed, aligned and enacted across organizational and inter-organizational contexts. Therefore, this study aims to investigate how firms build supply chain resilience through coordinated capability configurations. A systematic literature review using Scopus and Web of Science, synthesizing 52 peer-reviewed articles. Extracted data was descriptively and thematically analyzed, identifying resilience-related activities and capabilities and examining their distribution across organizational functions, supply chain levels and theoretical perspectives. Supply chain resilience arises from operational, relational and transformational capabilities across internal, supply chain and ecosystem levels. This study introduces a three-dimensional framework linking who enacts resilience, where it is targeted, and it’s strategic justification, while proposing a typology of resilience orientations spanning single dimensional, to fully integrated resilience approaches. This study advances a configurational and capability-based understanding of supply chain resilience by integrating the resource-based view, relational view and dynamic capabilities view. The proposed framework and typology provide a foundation for cumulative theory development and future empirical research on resilience capability alignment. The findings of this study offer a structured approach for diagnosing and developing resilience strategies. Through a multidimensional perspective, firms can better align capabilities across functions and supply chain levels and balance efficiency and redundancy in dynamic environments. This study moves beyond descriptive reviews of resilience activities by developing an integrative framework and typology explaining how resilience capabilities are systematically configured and enacted in global supply chains.