The Effect of Logistics Personnel’s Crisis Response Capability on Supply Performance: The Mediating Role of Supply Agility

This study investigates how key crisis-response capabilities of military logistics personnel—communication, networks, and collaboration—affect supply performance, and examines the mediating role of supply agility in these relationships. A survey was conducted among logistics practitioners in the Army, Navy, and Air Force, and the data were analyzed using structural equation modeling. The results show that networks and collaboration exert significant direct effects on supply performance, whereas the direct effect of communication is not statistically significant. Communication and collaboration have positive impacts on supply agility, while networks do not significantly influence agility. Mediation analysis reveals that supply agility fully mediates the relationship between communication and supply performance and partially mediates the relationship between collaboration and performance, but no mediating effect is found for networks. These findings indicate that supply performance in military logistics is not determined solely by crisis-response behaviors themselves, but depends structurally on the presence of an agile response system. In particular, communication acts as a strategic factor that contributes to performance only through enhanced agility, whereas collaboration operates as a dual mechanism with both direct and indirect effects. Overall, this study provides empirical evidence on performance-enhancing mechanisms of logistics personnel from a dynamic capabilities perspective and offers implications for improving military logistics systems and crisis-response strategies.