Developing the supply chain of tomorrow: a path to resilience and sustainability

Purpose This article aims to develop reliable and valid factors/antecedents and their interrelationship for structuring the supply chains to become more resilient and sustainable. Resilience and sustainability are both expected components of a modern supply chain. Prima facie, these appear contradictory to each other; therefore, a resilient sustainable supply chain (RSSC) needs in-depth exploration to find the factors supporting and contradicting the resilience and sustainability. Design/methodology/approach This paper explores the Indian manufacturing sector, through an empirical study, to understand and develop the reliable and valid factors/antecedents for an RSSC. First, a conceptual model of RSSC is proposed based on the extant literature evidence, domain knowledge and expert opinion. Second, hypotheses were developed to validate the proposed model by using statistical analysis of exploratory factor analysis, confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modelling. Findings The findings of the study suggest that supply chain visibility, flexibility, collaboration, control network design and digitalisation are the important factors/antecedents to build an RSSC. It was also found that digitalization control and flexibility have a full mediating effect on sustainability, whereas visibility collaboration and network design have a partial mediating effect on sustainability. Resilience has a direct effect on sustainability. Originality/value Based on the findings, the authors in this study proposed a more precise and contextual RSSC definition as compared to few definitions available in the extant literature.