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Identifying relationship structures that advance the firm's resilience capacity

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Businesses increasingly experience turbulence due to various social, technological, economic, political and natural changes. In order to survive such disruptions firms are called to increase their resilience capacities to be able to foresee and prepare for change and recover fast from adversities (Williams, Gruber, Sutcliffe, Shepherd, & Zhao, 2017). However, in the hyperconnected business world of today, such capacities can only be developed considering other businesses that a firm is dependent on. This is while, on the one hand, connectivity to other businesses facilitates access to resources (Pfeffer & Salancik, 1978), and on the other hand, any dependencies to others increase the risk of failure in turbulent conditions wherein every business is more vulnerable (Sheffi & Rice Jr, 2005). Such a dual role of business partners makes it vital to understand how relationships can be managed to increase firm’s resilience. This empirical research views firms as Complex Adaptive Systems and uses Social Exchange theory to investigate relationship structures that can support resilience in turbulent environments.