Firms’ strategic responses to rising uncertainty amid ongoing geopolitical tensions: The synergistic mediating role of network capability and innovation ambidexterity

• Challenges conventional perspectives on supply chain uncertainty and firm-level strategic response. • Explores how firms develop network capabilities and innovation ambidexterity to enhance resilience. • Shows how firms build supply chain resilience dynamically through layered, strategic responses. • Network capabilities enable innovation ambidexterity, jointly enhancing adaptability and resilience. With our study, we aimed to enrich the discourse on supply chain disruptions by exploring the strategic responses of firms to supply chain uncertainty (SCUn) that enhance supply chain resilience (SCRes). Drawing on the dynamic capabilities view (DCV), we investigated whether and how firms utilise uncertainty amid geopolitical turmoil as a catalyst to enhance SCRes. This contrasts with the predominant focus found in the existing literature on the detrimental impacts of uncertainty amid rising geopolitical tensions. Using survey data drawn from 242 firms across multiple industries in Pakistan, we employed structural equation modelling (SEM) to test our proposed model, introducing network capabilities (NCs) and innovation ambidexterity (IA) as mediators to elucidate their differential roles in the SCUn-SCRes relationship. Our findings reveal that SCUn triggers strategic responses aimed at building SCRes, with NCs emerging as a significant mediator that enhances SCRes. However, IA has an insignificant mediating effect. Notably, our study uncovers a sequential mediation pathway from NCs to IA, highlighting the dynamic interplay between these capabilities in translating SCUn into enhanced SCRes amid global crises. Our study provides actionable insights for logistics and supply chain managers who navigate uncertain environments amid geopolitical tensions, emphasizing the importance of NCs in driving IA towards achieving SCRes. Our research, which makes a novel contribution by going beyond the conventional perspectives on SCUn and SCRes, advances a new stream of literature on how SCUn influences SCRes through the mediating roles of NCs and IA.