Understanding Supply Chain Resilience as a Multi-level Framework: A Systematic Literature Review

Supply chain resilience (SCRes) has received considerable attention from scholars and practitioners because organizations and supply chains are facing increasing disasters, uncertainties, and risks. They seek to survive disruptions and return to their original or a better state, and thereby achieve competitive advantage. However, existing studies investigate SCRes mainly from organizational and supply chain perspectives, which limits scholars’ and practitioners’ understanding and presents an incomplete picture of SCRes. Therefore, we conducted a systematic literature review (SLR) to advance SCRes knowledge through the theoretical lens of grand theory (GT). A total of 102 SCRes relevant, high-quality journal papers published between 2004 and 2023 were selected to synthesize existing knowledge and identify future research directions. Our study makes several novel contributions to existing SCRes knowledge. First, we believe that SCRes is determined by interactions between micro-level individuals, meso-level organizations, and macro-level environments. Thus, this study differs from existing SCRes studies by understanding it from the individual, organizational, and supply chain perspectives. Second, from the macro-level perspective, we conclude that SCRes is influenced by social, economic, technological, policy, and cultural environments. Third, from the micro-level perspective, employees’ learning orientation, risk perceptions, self-leadership, and trust may impact on organizational resilience and SCRes. Finally, this study is one of first to apply GT to extend existing SCRes knowledge. We also suggest future research directions advancing SCRes knowledge.