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PurposeThe coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic unveiled resilience deficits in supply chains. Scholars and practitioners aim to identify supply chain resilience (SCRES) measures suitable for this unique disruption; however, empirical evidence on a pandemic's specific characteristics, resulting challenges, and suitable countermeasures is scarce.Design/methodology/approachA single-case study on an automotive supply chain network (ASCN), including eight nodes, was conducted. Based on current research and interviews with 35 experts, characteristic pandemic challenges for the ASCN were identified. Moreover, promising SCRES measures were determined along the most prominent SCRES levers. The findings lead to five central propositions and advance organizational information processing theory in the context of SCRES.FindingsThis study’s results confirm unique pandemic characteristics along the supply chain disruption's duration, severity, propagation, and volatility. The resulting unprecedented challenges made the ASCN apply novel SCRES measures, particularly regarding collaboration and risk management culture. However, well-known visibility and flexibility strategies were also suitable. Overall, agility and collaboration measures showed the highest capacity to address characteristic pandemic challenges. A lack of preparedness impeded some measures' application, calling for enhanced proactive risk management following the pandemic.Originality/valueThis paper addresses several research calls by providing in-depth empirical evidence on hitherto conceptually researched pandemic characteristics, challenges, and suitable SCRES measures from a network perspective. The study uncovers the different perceptions of individual tiers, emphasizing the need to analyze supply chain disruptions from multiple angles.

Recent supply chain (SC) disruptions, first and foremost the devastating COVID-19 pandemic, revealed the vulnerability and fragility of today’s SCs. Mismatches between supply and demand dominated the agenda of multinational companies across industries and geographies, leading to an increasing importance of the supply chain management (SCM) domain. Research and practice intensified their efforts to improve supply chain resilience (SCRES) and overcome adverse SC performance consequences. This dissertation, including six essays applying three different methodologies, provides valuable contributions to this highly-topical subject. Two systematic literature reviews analyze current SCRES opportunities emerging from industry 4.0 (I4.0) and blockchain. A multiple and a single case study design explore SC challenges and solutions in two key sectors, the healthcare and the automotive industry, during the COVID-19 pandemic. Finally, two Delphi studies complement future prospects by examining the effect of I4.0 and circular economy (CE) practices on SCRES in the year 2030. The essays’ multiple perspectives on SCRES contribute to theory building and provide practitioners with essential guidance in steering SCRES efforts and choosing appropriate measures in these challenging times.The first essay, “Improving Supply Chain Resilience through Industry 4.0: A Systematic Literature Review under the Impressions of the COVID-19 Pandemic,”targets a major research gap in supply chain risk management (SCRM) literature by conceptualizing the relationship between I4.0 and SCRES. Based on a systematically derived sample of 62 high-quality journal articles, a comprehensive framework depicting the relationship between different I4.0 technologies, SCRES antecedents, and SCRES phases is introduced. It reveals, among others, that big data analytics is particularly suitable for improving SCRES, while additive manufacturing and cyber-physical systems still lack proof of effectiveness. Moreover, visibility and velocity are the resilience antecedents that benefit most from I4.0 implementation. The effect on other antecedents such as SCRM culture and SC (re-)engineering is still not clearly understood. The framework also reveals that I4.0 holistically supports pre-disruption resilience measures, enabling more effective proactive risk management. The framework is applied to a use case, the COVID-19-affected automotive industry, to verify the results' coherence and support practical implementation.The second research paper, “Is the Blockchain the Holy Grail for achieving Supply Chain Resilience? Insights from a Literature Review,”focuses on another technological innovation with promising SCRES potential, the blockchain. Although many scholars claimed a positive effect of the distributed ledger technology on SCRES, a conceptualization for this crucial relationship was still missing in SCRM literature. The present contribution closes this research gap by systematically analyzing a sample of 62 peer-reviewed journal articles and conference papers at the intersection of blockchain and SCRES. More specifically, the link between specific blockchain characteristics, SCRES antecedents, and SC risk types is explored. The results reveal that visibility and validation are the most relevant blockchain characteristics for improving SCRES. The SCRES antecedents agility, collaboration, and SC (re-)engineering can benefit from blockchain implementation, whereas the effect on SCRM culture is widely unexplored. While there is consensus on blockchain’s usability for mitigating security, operational, and supply risks, the effect on demand risks requires further attention. To facilitate the practical implementation of this paper’s results, the findings served as a foundation for discussing SCRES opportunities emerging from well-known blockchain applications such as smart contracts and tracking solutions.