۱٫ Introduction

۲٫ Theoretical background

۳٫ Hypotheses

۴٫ Methods

۵٫ Analysis and results

۶٫ Discussion and conclusions

References

Abstract

Marketing in an increasingly tumultuous marketplace requires resilience -the ability to withstand, adapt, and flourish despite turmoil and adverse change- that extends beyond firm boundaries. Although external resources are arguably essential to achieve resilience, little is known how and when firms’ social capital derived from interorganizational relationships can lead to supply chain resilience. Therefore, we investigate the role of absorptive capacity and marketing-supply chain management alignment in realizing the potential impact of social capital on supply chain resilience. Using data obtained from dual respondents from 265 Turkish firms, we test the mediating role of absorptive capacity and the moderating role of marketing-supply chain management alignment. Our findings indicate absorptive capacity mediates the relationship between social capital and supply chain resilience, and the links between social capital and absorptive capacity and social capital and supply chain resilience are stronger when marketing-supply chain management alignment is high. We also find that supply chain resilience is positively associated with organizational performance, empirically supporting the proposed value of supply chain resilience for firm strategy. Accordingly, our paper highlights that both absorptive capacity and marketing-supply chain management alignment are necessary to realize the actual value of social capital for supply chain resilience and ensuing performance.

Introduction

In today’s highly connected global marketplace, risks and disruptions are becoming unquantifiable threats to long-term success and survival (Colicchia & Strozzi, 2012) and overturning firm-centric traditional management practices that assume steady conditions (Pettit, Croxton, & Fiksel, 2013). Each day, firms face disruptions that can jeopardize their ability to perform effectively. For example, Boeing’s plan to introduce 787 Dreamliner and outrun its major competitors was plagued by severe and unexpected supply chain disruptions causing significant production delays and cost hikes as well as putting Boeing’s supply chain resilience into question (Melnyk, Closs, Griffis, Zobel, & Macdonald, 2014). Further, for example, when trade sanctions were imposed between Russia and 25 other countries in 2014, import-dependent Russian firms had to reorganize their supply chain very rapidly against such major disruption. Laine and Galkina (2017, pp. 916–۹۱۹) describe the case of Russian SMEs in the shipbuilding industry, which sourced 90% of their inputs from imports, and how they reconfigured their supply chain from the mostly Western providers toward Chinese. A firm manager describes their approach: “Through the years, we were using our portfolio of established relationships, where everything was stable and predictable…” With a proactive development of R&D and production processes and business relationships –alongside operating with the existing supply chain partners- the firm was able to develop a relationship with one Chinese firm. When the disruption occurred overnight, they were able to increase the volumes of orders with this supplier at a reasonably low level of risk, as they had already developed a certain degree of trust and social capital. Eventually, they not only serve their existing customers but also to increase their market share by taking over the market from competitors who struggled with their supplies (ibid).