How Does Supply Chain Resilience Affect Supply Chain Performance? The Mediating Effect of Sustainability

Abstract

In recent years, interruption or failure events have occurred due to frequent natural disasters, the outbreak of COVID-19, policy environment turbulence, an increasingly complex business environment, and the increasingly fragile global supply chain. This has reduced the efficiency of supply chains and customer service quality and increased operating costs, creating new requirements for supply chain flexibility and sustainability. When investigating 21 companies based on 200 questionnaires and a structural equation model analysis, the results showed that the elasticity of the supply chain for supply chain sustainability, economic sustainability, social sustainability, and environment sustainability has an obvious positive effect: supply chain sustainability has an obvious positive effect on supply chain performance. Supply chain resilience has no direct positive effect on supply chain performance, but it has a strong indirect effect on supply chain performance under the mediating effect of supply chain sustainability. In view of this, in order to create sustainable supply chain development and improve the performances of supply chains, it is necessary to establish the awareness of risk prevention, root the risk culture in supply chain network organization, and improve supply chain resilience in multiple dimensions. Enterprises in the supply chain should continue to build their resilience and establish effective strategies to integrate supply chains. The intermediary role of sustainability in supply chains and of supply chain flexibility in supply chain performance shows the influence of economically, socially, and environmentally sustainable angles, such as the implementation of supply chain management, the maximization of the interests of the whole supply chain, improving the ability of supply chain enterprises to innovate and develop, establishing customer awareness, and enhancing humanistic ideas. Dynamic selection of supply chain partners while focusing on their green performance promotes the green development of supply chain enterprises.