Leveraging relational capital with ambidexterity in building supply chain resilience

ABSTRACT

Grounding in the nexus of the relational capital theory and dynamic ambidexterity view, this study examines the effect of supplier collaboration on supply chain capabilities including flexibility and risk management using a sample of 195 manufacturers in China. It also assesses the antecedent role of the supply chain capabilities in building supply chain resilience and its resulting competitive advantage. This study employs path analyses using data collected from manufacturers. The findings of this study indicate the significant role of relational capital gained from supplier collaboration in building supply chain capabilities of flexibility and risk management capabilities, which are shown to lead to supply chain resilience. Competitive advantage also results from enhanced supply chain resilience. This study provides an integrated view of relational capital and ambidexterity for vulnerability mitigation and capabilities improvement, which offers implications to supply chain practitioners that maintaining a dynamic ambidexterity is critical to bolster supply chain resilience in the time of unexpected disruptive incidents.

KEYWORDS:

• Supplier collaboration
• flexibility
• risk management
• resilience
• competitive advantage

Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to Emily Wang (The Kinkaid School, Houston) for her assistance in summarising relevant literature, conducting data analyses, and constructing Tables and Figures for the paper. The authors also thank the anonymous reviewers for their instrumental comments and suggestions during the two rounds of review.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author, JY, upon reasonable request.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China.