Understanding supply chain resilience: through enacted learning

Purpose
This study examines how individuals and organisations make sense of supply chain disruptions and how enacted learning shapes dynamic capabilities (DC) that strengthen supply chain resilience (SCR) during recovery and mitigation phases. While SCR research identifies structural resilience attributes, it insufficiently explains the interpretive mechanisms through which resilience-oriented capabilities are mobilised under uncertainty.
Design/methodology/approach
Adopting an abductive qualitative design, the study develops an interpretive explanation of how disruption experiences are translated into resilience-oriented capability development. Twenty-one semi-structured interviews were conducted with experts from Swedish organisations operating in globally interconnected supply chains between 2021 and 2024.
Findings
The findings show that resilience emerges through enacted learning structured around commitment, capacity and expectations. These interpretive dimensions function as micro-foundations that shape how organisations mobilise dynamic capabilities – such as collaboration, flexibility, digitalisation competence and strategic monitoring – during recovery and mitigation phases. Dynamic capabilities are therefore not automatically mobilised in crises but are interpretively enacted through sensemaking processes.
Originality/value
By integrating sensemaking theory with dynamic capabilities and supply chain resilience research, this study identifies enacted learning as the interpretive mechanism linking disruption experience to capability mobilisation. The findings extend SCR theory beyond structural configurations and contribute to dynamic capability research by clarifying how resilience-oriented capabilities are socially and cognitively enacted in overlapping crisis contexts.