Flexible business strategies to enhance resilience in manufacturing supply chains: An empirical study

Resilience and flexibility in manufacturing and supply chains are widely discussed at times of the present crises situation due to COVID-19 pandemic. It is a question of ongoing debate among practitioners about the role of flexibility and complexity in building resilience for firms and their supply chains. In this research, we examine the flexible business strategies at the demand, supply, and process side of supply chains contributing to resilience. Five of the major flexible business strategies were acknowledged in this research and the single items for constructing them were posited. In this study, we observe the correlations among the constructs based on survey-based research in electronics manufacturing firms, followed by a dimensionality reduction of constructs using factor analysis. The data collected were subject to several initial tests for ensuring validity, reliability, and adequacy using relevant statistical indicators. The measurement model was converted into a structural model and path coefficients were determined. From the path analysis, the latent variables contributing to flexibility in supply chains were found to be independent estimators of resilience. Adding to it, we observe that the single items for measuring the flexibility of supply, process, product, and pricing strategies were evidenced to be strongly correlated. The results are useful to managers for taking decisions related to flexibility implementation, towards enhancing resilience in supply chains.