Sharing, technology, and resilience in agricultural SMEs: pathways to sustainable supply chains under VUCA conditions

This study examines the way in which information sharing, technology implementation, and supply chain resilience (SCR) support sustainable supply chain management (SSCM) under volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA) conditions in agricultural SMEs. The structural model, which utilizes data from 756 agricultural businesses across five northern Thai provinces, explains 65.7 % of the variance in SCR and 71.3 % of the variance in SSCM. Results show that the implementation of technology improves SCR by 44.1 % and information sharing increases SCR by 42.2 %. Additionally, SCR confirms its essential function in SSCM by strongly promoting sustainability outcomes (β = 0.695, p < 0.001). This link is negatively moderated by VUCA conditions, though, since high VUCA intensity reduces SCR’s sustainability efficacy by 73.6 %. According to these results, although robust resilience (stability during disruptions) and adaptive resilience (responsiveness to changes in the business environment) approaches are essential, they must be supplemented with context-specific dynamic skills during extreme volatility. For agricultural SMEs with limited resources, the study offers practical insights that help managers and policymakers create resilience-driven sustainability strategies suited to unstable conditions.