Digitally enabled resilience in business networks: exploring issues for the firm, relationship and the network

Purpose This paper aims to theorise digitally enabled resilience in business networks as a multi-level phenomenon. While digital technologies are widely assumed to enhance resilience, existing research has largely focused on firm-level outcomes and has overlooked how digital enablement privileges different resilience logics across firms, relationships and networks. Design/methodology/approach The paper is conceptual. Drawing on business network theory, the authors develop a multi-level framework that distinguishes firm-, relationship- and network-level approaches to digitally enabled resilience and examines how digital tools operate differently at each level. Findings The authors show that digital technologies enable resilience through distinct mechanisms: orchestration and control at the firm level, synchronisation and mutual adaptation at the relationship level, and self-organisation and repurposing at the network level. However, digital solutions that enhance resilience at one level may undermine it at others. These cross-level tensions are most clearly evident in underlying data architectures, which embed competing assumptions about governance, access and adaptive capacity. Originality/value The paper advances research on digital resilience by reconceptualising it as a multi-level, network-embedded phenomenon. It introduces data architecture as a critical yet underexplored structural dimension that shapes how digitally enabled resilience is realised and contested across business networks.