Conceptualising Supply Chain Resilience Within Social Enterprises

ABSTRACT This research seeks to conceptualise supply chain resilience (SCRes) in a social enterprise (SE) context, focusing on SEs with a social mission to tackle food insecurity and food poverty. Despite the increasingly mature field of SCRes and awareness of the critical role SEs play in tackling social challenges such as food poverty, no studies have explored what SCRes entails in an SE context and whether SEs build their SCRes differently. An in‐depth review of literature was conducted, adopting a narrative approach due to the interdisciplinary nature of the study. The analysis shows that when faced with supply chain disruptions, SEs may be at a disadvantage compared to commercial firms, as they lack access to financial resources to absorb shocks and do not have spare management capacity for planning and risk management. SEs compensate by drawing on their network connections and engage in diagonal cross‐sector networking with a wide variety of actors. SEs leverage their unique qualities, such as being embedded in the local community, utilising their social capital and adopting flexible ways of working. These practices enable them to build SCRes differently to commercial firms. We develop a conceptual framework that encapsulates SE‐led SCRes.