key: cord-1049141-50mq5d3v
authors: Orlando, Beatrice; Tortora, Debora; Pezzi, Alberto; Bitbol-Saba, Nathalie
title: The disruption of the international supply chain: Firm resilience and knowledge preparedness to tackle the COVID-19 outbreak
date: 2022-03-31
journal: Journal of International Management
DOI: 10.1016/j.intman.2021.100876
sha: 2243109dd929c8f38ec0144ac88e333b03ab568e
doc_id: 1049141
cord_uid: 50mq5d3v

The lockdowns of several countries due to COVID-19 outbreak resulted in severe economic consequences, among which was the immediate general disruption of the international supply chain, with few exceptions. This article aims to investigate whether some supply chains were resilient or not and why, using a knowledge-based approach and specifically focusing on the role played by supply chain innovation in building resilience to disruptions, thanks to knowledge preparedness. The study is motivated by two main rationales: the unique situation of a global pandemic and the absence of studies providing grounded evidences of supply chain resilience in a worst-case scenario. The research is based on the assumption that knowledge preparedness introduces logistics/supply chain innovations and enables companies to prevent, detect, and respond to unpredictable negative events. By using a large-scale sample of European firms' data from the Eurostat and a multivariate regression analysis, the authors cross-study the effects of supply chain knowledge preparedness – based on innovation type and expenditures – on the international trade of goods from January to June 2020. The results confirm that the most resilient supply chains were those that had previously introduced innovations, a factor that strengthens the knowledge preparedness of firms when faced with unforeseeable supply chain disruptions.

This research aims to study the antecedents of supply chain resilience through a knowledge-based approach, specifically by analysing supply chain innovation and focusing on knowledge preparedness as the antecedent of resilience. The study has two main rationales: the unprecedented situation of the global COVID-19 pandemic, which has resulted in a global supply chain disruption, and the absence of previous research investigating such an extreme situation. Such resounding research gaps have been tackled by providing solid evidence built on extensive analyses conducted on a large-scale dataset.

In January 2020, the COVID-19 outbreak caught the whole world completely off guard. By 9 March 2020, Italy declared an originally argued that supply chain innovation is a predictor of knowledge preparedness and resilience. The model hypotheses were tested on a large-scale sample of firms located in the European Union. The temporal factors are among the many motivations that led the authors to focus their attention on this area. After the initial China outbreak, Italy was the first country massively affected by the pandemic, promptly followed by other European countries. Yet, these countries showed a great responsiveness to the threat. The multivariate linear regression confirmed the model's hypotheses: supply chain innovation is a proxy of knowledge preparedness and is inversely related to supply chain disruption. Notably, we distinguished the impact per type of innovation. Inventory management innovation was the most important supply chain innovation that helped firms to resist supply chain disruption.

Also, the most important innovations in the medical supply chain were those related to the identification of productsto readily detect out-of-stock -e-procurement, and reverse logistics. The analysis in this article has several critical implications. At a business level, it demonstrates the importance of knowledge preparedness in order to avoid supply chain disruptions. At a social level, it indicates the pathway to reinforce country systems for generating structural resilience in response to unpredictable events and disasters. The social health level, perhaps, is the most important: the results clearly indicate the kind of innovations that are needed to avoid the out-of-stock of vital medical supplies. The rest of the article is structured as follows: first, we review some of the main literature antecedents; second, we present and discuss the results of the empirical analysis; finally, we explain the implications of the study and suggest a few crucial future research pathways.

Due to the COVID-19 outbreak, most organisations faced many strategic challenges in managing their supply chains to honour the delivery of products and service and preserve customer satisfaction. If organisations failed to meet such expectations, society would suffer huge consequences (Mafabi et al., 2012) . This catastrophic scenario clearly showed a need for resilience. Supply chain resilience refers to 'the adaptive capability of the supply chain to prepare for unexpected events, respond to disruptions and recover from them by maintaining continuity of operations at the desired level of connectedness and control over structure and function' (Ponomarov and Holcomb, 2009, p. 131) . Current definitions of resilience have been gleaned from the fields of engineering, psychology, ecology and disaster relief (see Table 1 ). Three constructs were taken into account in most definitions: the phases of resilience, resilience strategies and the capabilities needed for resilience (Ali et al., 2017) . With reference to the formative elements required to build an adaptive capacity for supply chain resilience, the literature provides a number of perspectives focusing on different elements, such as adaptability, creativity, situational awareness, resourcefulness, learning, collaboration, tenacity and trust (Scholten et al., 2019) .

For example, Pettit et al. (2010 Pettit et al. ( , 2019 tried to understand the interplay between the drivers of disruption (vulnerabilities) and the capabilities required to endure disruptions. This conceptualisation was frequently used to understand adaptation and growth (Alfarsi et al., 2020; Fiksel, 2015; Ribeiro and Barbosa-Povoa, 2018; Zhao et al., 2011) . At a conceptual level, scholars distinguish between predisruptionpreparedness and mitigationand post-disruptionstabilisation and recovery. Our study aims to provide a clear understanding of factors that are salient for firm survival in the pre-disruption phase. Thus, the study focused on preparednessproactiveness before an eventand the relevant learning processes that would allow a fast adaptation of routines and procedures for supply chain resilience. In the pre-disruption phase, five essential proactive elements emerged to gauge the level of readiness of a company's supply chain resilience: (1) situation awareness, in terms of understanding supply chain vulnerabilities, planning for such events, ability to discern a possible disruption by sensing and interpreting events; (2) robustness, the ability to resist change and use a proactive anticipation of change; (3) visibility, the warning strategy to align firm capabilities and contain disruptive impact; (4) security, designed in advance to protect the supply chain; and (5) knowledge management and understanding of the supply chain and human resource structures as the building blocks for creating a resilient supply chain (Ali et al., 2017) . Therefore, knowledge management in the pre-disruption phase improves supply chain resilience. Not by chance, knowledge preparedness makes companies able to prevent, detect and respond to unpredictable contrary events. Successful knowledge-based and resilient firms are characterised by high performance, high flexibility and adaptiveness (Mafabi et al., 2013) . Accordingly, we investigate how organisations use knowledge preparedness to build a global supply chain resilience.

The ability to bounce back from disruptive situations, thanks to supply chain resilience, enables organisations to respect their commitments towards the market in terms of service, delivery quality, products availability and time of delivery. Thus, the competitiveness of the supply chain determines the success of the ecosystem. In this context, time advantage is essential for the competitiveness of a supply chain. As a matter of fact, the logistics success mostly depends on the management of the lead-time frontier (Harrison, 2001) . The time-based competition is aimed at outperforming competitors by providing products to the end customer in a shorter time than competitors (Christopher, 2000) . Speed determines supply chain agility (Agarwal et al., 2007) . It therefore follows that a short lead time improves responsiveness to customers when markets are volatile (Christopher, 2000) . The focus on speed determines a paradigm shift from the concept of the first-mover advantage to that of the fast-mover advantage (Hawk et al., 2013) . However, to achieve such superior performance through time-based competition, the supply chain must develop superior knowledge capabilities Mital et al., 2018; Santoro et al., 2019; Sasson et al., 2017) . Timely response to customers stems from readiness and high coordination within the entire ecosystem (Cha, 2020; Meschi et al., 2017; Soto-Acosta et al., 2018) . Hence, there is a strong link between knowledge and readiness (Rusly et al., 2012) . According to Rusly et al. (2012) , readiness is a multidimensional construct composed of structural and psychological factors that leverage organisational knowledge management in terms of knowledge acquisition, creation, and sharing. With reference to the resource-based view, a knowledge-based view of the firm and the dynamic capabilities approach, companies use knowledge resourcescollected and recombined over timein order to generate and implement new organisational structures, processes and competences (Mafabi et al., 2012) . The knowledge embedded in human, structural and relational capitalsa key differentiating factor in business (Del Giudice and Maggioni, 2014) -is strongly related to innovation and performance (Cabrilo and Dahms, 2018; Campanella et al., 2014; McDowell et al., 2018; Papa et al., 2018; Subramaniam and Youndt, 2005) . Consequently, Holt et al. (2007) suggested that readiness depends on who is involved in the knowledge process, where it is occurring, what is involved and how it is occurring. Yet, knowledge management readiness also depends on socialisation, externalisation, combination and internalisation -SECI processesof knowledge (Karim et al., 2012; Mehralian et al., 2018) . Different from the aforementioned antecedent studies, we assume a technology-based perspective by arguing that innovation is a key determinant of knowledge readiness. Broadly speaking, the innovation capacitya firm's ability to exploit internal and external knowledgeis deemed to foster knowledge management capacity (Santoro et al., 2018 ). Yet, the capacity to realise both exploitative (incremental) and explorative (radical) innovations, known as organisational ambidexterity (Caniëls et al., 2017) , is also affected by innovation in logistics (Ardito et al., 2018) . Ambidexterity is the ability to simultaneously pursue both incremental and discontinuous innovation and change (Dezi et al., 2019) . Such capacity affects the firm's adaptation to changes in demand (Ramachandran et al., 2019) . Similarly, innovation in logistics influences the mechanisms of knowledge sharing between a firm and its customers or suppliers by creating a common knowledge base for external and internal counterparts that facilitates the use and sharing of relevant knowledge. These sharing mechanisms, in turn, affect ambidexterity and firm performance (Dezi et al., 2019) . For instance, the purposive use of disruptive digital technologies affects the way knowledge is managed within organisations, acting as a facilitator (Santoro et al., 2018) . Accordingly, innovation emerges as a pre-condition of organisational resilience (Bristow and Healy, 2018; Euchner, 2019; Held et al., 2019; Sabahi and Parast, 2020) . In particular, innovativeness is positively associated with global supply chain resilience (Golgeci and Ponomarov, 2013; Kwak et al., 2018) . Building on these considerations, we argue that supply chain innovation improves lead time, thus enhancing coordination at a global level. This positive effect is due to improved efficiency and effectiveness. Ultimately, supply chain innovation directly and positively affects knowledge preparedness.

To the best of our knowledge, previous studies have not explicitly considered the relationship between supply chain innovation and knowledge preparedness. We argue that supply chain innovation directly affects a firm's chances of survival, because it creates a sort of knowledge buffer, or knowledge preparedness, that can be deployed to adapt during harsh times. Consequently, we hypothesise the following:

(1) H1: There is a linear and positive relationship between supply chain innovation at an international level and knowledge preparedness.

(2) H2: Supply chain innovation at an international level is a predictor of knowledge preparedness.

A supply chain disruption is an interruption in the information and material flows of goods due to an unexpected event (Ambulkar et al., 2015; Craighead et al., 2007) . Recently, a few studies have tried to explore the effects of the pandemic disease on the disruption of global supply chains through means of simulation models (Ivanov, 2020a) . These effects can be synthesised in terms of a severe shortage of medical supplies (Hobbs, 2020; Nikolopoulos et al., 2020; Singh et al., 2020) . According to the research, the COVID-19 pandemic will have long-lasting effects on the international supply chain.

Considering the systematic and extremely negative consequences of a disruption in the global supply chain, scholars, firms and institutions, such as the World Economic Forum (Ambulkar et al., 2015) , have been paying increasing attention to the creation of resilience mechanisms. Despite the absolute relevance of supply chain resilience for all economies, not much is known about how to build such resilience (Jüttner and Maklan, 2011) . Some prior scholars have attempted to explain why innovative firms are more resilient to supply chain and global sourcing disruption (Gunasekaran et al., 2015; Sabahi and Parast, 2020; Wieland et al., 2020) . However, to date, the role of knowledge readiness in the face of global supply chain disruptions has been scantly examined.

By and large, relevant prior research suggests that knowledge management and firm innovativeness play a critical role in global supply chain management (Scuotto et al., 2017; Singh et al., 2019) .

With the COVID-19 outbreak, the severity of global supply chain disruption led scholars, policymakers and various organisations to focus their attention on building resilient supply chains. Guan et al. (2020, p. 1) argued that 'regardless of the strategy, the complexity of global supply chains will magnify losses beyond the direct effects of COVID-19'. Bridging the gap in the aforementioned studies, we argue that knowledge preparedness allows the mitigation of global supply chain disruption. Thus, we hypothesise the following:

(3) H3: Knowledge preparedness has a linear and negative effect on international supply chain disruption.

(4) H4: International trade is a predictor of international supply chain disruption.

This research is focused on member states of the European Union. There are several reasons that led the authors to consider this specific set of countries. First and foremost, Europe, and Italy, in particular, was the first territory to be affected by the pandemic after the initial COVID-19 outbreak in China. Specifically, the outbreak, which is still ongoing at the time of this writing, had a dramatic impact on society and business because of its fast and large diffusion and the high number of casualties (Saglietto et al., 2020; Yuan et al., 2020) . Second, the pandemic severely affected the European supply chain (Ivanov, 2020a) .

Data related to the international supply chain have been extracted from the Eurostat website in June 2020 from the specific database that was provided in order to gather a better understanding of the pandemic crisis (https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/ science-technology-innovation/data/database). Eurostat is the statistical office of European Union and it gathers and distributes various statistics related to EU member states.

The dataset includes the supply chain innovation of the entire population of European firms, classified by innovation type, which was pertinent because we consider innovation to be a proxy for knowledge preparedness.

We assumed that firms that were prepared to face the global disruption experienced a milder interruption of trades (especially at an international level). Consequently, we investigated what type of supply chain innovation fostered preparedness the most. In doing so, we distinguished companies providing medical supplies from all other goods/services, given the relevance of medical supplies during the pandemic. Moreover, we weighted companies by country. In addition, we also tried to understand whether the sentiment of consumers (in lockdown and frightened by the global situation) or that of other actors affected their purchases/behaviours or not. This is relevant to understand, for instance, if it were the consumers' sentiment that drove the plunge of trades or not. Consequently, we collected the following data: international trade in goods of COVID-19 medical supplies (ITmed), international trade in goods (ITG), balance of payments by country (BPC) and sentiment indicator (SI):

• ITmed refers to COVID-19 test kits/instruments and apparatus used in diagnostic testing, expressed in million euros for the period between December 2019 and May 2020. • ITG refers to quarterly data of the balance of payments by country, expressed in million euros for the period between December 2019 and May 2020. • BPC is expressed in million euros and refers to the monthly data of the balance of payments by country for the period between December 2019 and May 2020. • Sentiment indicator refers to monthly data of the confidence indicator for the period between December 2019 and May 2020. This confidence indicator is the result of a survey of different sectors, calculated as an arithmetic means of answers (seasonally adjusted balances) to a selection of questions related to the reference variable they are supposed to track. These variables are the economic sentiment indicator, industrial confidence indicator, retail confidence indicator, consumer confidence indicator and service confidence indicator. All detailed information can be retrieved from the Eurostat metadata (https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/cache/ metadata/en/ei_bcs_esms.htm).

Broadly speaking, we tested whether supply chain innovation is a proxy (predictor) of supply chain knowledge preparedness or not. We also explored how European innovative supply chains performed during the lockdown and the resulting global disruption. Data related to disruption specifically refer to the lockdown period. When companies performed fairly (mild reductions in trades), it means they were resilient, thanks to the supply chain innovation previously introduced, which we classified by innovation type. When company performance was poor, it means they were not resilient. Thus, we argue that poor performance indicates a lack of knowledge preparedness.

Data related to supply chain innovation are drawn from the Community Innovation Survey (CIS). These data refer to the CIS 2016 version, as updated in February 2020. We use these data to estimate knowledge preparedness of the supply chain and to understand how previous innovation could be used as a buffer against unexpected disruptions due to environmental shocks. Clearly, preparedness was built in advance through gathering innovative knowledge and technologies.

Retrieved data refer to enterprises that either introduced innovation in logistics by type of innovation or not and enterprises with expenditures for innovation in logistics. Enterprises are clustered by size (small, medium and large firms depending on the number of employee) and class of expenditures (expressed in euros). Innovation in logistics and supply chain is classified as innovations in logistics, other innovations in logistics, redesign of shipment, inventory management systems, digital supply chain management, eprocurement, unique and automatic identification of products within the whole supply chain, reverse logistics and new delivery models, including the use of alternatively fuelled vehicles or multimodal logistics. All values are expressed in numbers. This classification is the result of a survey conducted by the European Union. Detailed information on the survey and variables are available on the Eurostat website (https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/science-technology-innovation/data/database).

The use of Eurostat data, and CIS in particular, is solidly grounded in prior research (Bakhshi and McVittie, 2009; Hofman et al., 2020) . Most important, the use of such a source is strongly encouraged at this moment as a means to create a solid knowledge basis through replicable analyses and open-source data.

Given the general intent to understand whether supply chain innovation is a predictor (proxy) of knowledge preparedness, we used a predictive model to verify our hypotheses. Specifically, a multivariate linear regression analysis was performed to test the model's hypotheses, along with descriptive statistics on the sample. This method has been largely adopted in the field of study (Hong et al., 2019; Wang and Hu, 2020; Wijaya et al., 2019) and enables understanding the degree at which the set of independent variables is a predictor of the chosen dependent variables, which are called responses (Imai, 2011) . The general equation is the following:

where Y identifies the n × p matrix of dependent variables, X is the n x (q + 1) matrix of q predictors, B is the (q + 1) matrix of fixed parameters and Ξ is an n × p matrix such that the matrix is a multivariate normally distributed with a covariance matrix Σ. We used this model to simultaneously test the different hypotheses of our model, which is aimed at verifying whether innovation in supply chain is a proxy of knowledge preparedness, useful in buffering firms from the international supply chain disruption caused by the COVID-19 outbreak or not. The general representation of the model is shown in Fig. 1 .

We used the mean value during the examined period for each of the variables. The few missing values were excluded from the sample. The final dataset included the following countries: Belgium, Bulgaria, Czechia, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, North Macedonia, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Serbia, Slovenia, Slovakia, Spain, and Sweden.

The variables and abbreviations are reported in Table 2 . We originally tested whether supply chain innovation is a proxy of supply chain knowledge preparedness. Based on the model, we considered enterprises that introduced innovation in logistics by type of innovation and enterprises with expenditures for innovation in logistics as our independent variables. We also assumed such innovations are a proxy of knowledge preparedness. The response variables are international trade (before the pandemic), international trade in goods of COVID-19 medical supplies and international trade in goods during the pandemic. The two different international trades in goods are needed to evaluate whether there was a plunge of trades or not and how intense it was.

Previous studies have used similar measures in terms of international trade to evaluate supply chain performance (Gereffi, 1999; Gunasekaran et al., 2001; Mann, 2012) , so we adopted these variables as a proxy of international supply chain disruption.

We also employed different control variables. In addition to firm size and class, the sample was also controlled for balance of payments by country (Janus and Riera-Crichton, 2013) and sentiment indicator (Johnson and Watson, 2011) .

Descriptive statistics are reported in Table 3 . Interestingly, Table 3 signals that there is a great volatility in the sample. Such volatility is generally deemed a proxy for risk (Chen and Petkova, 2012) . So, the first result that emerged from the analysis is a presence of huge business risk. In addition, Table 3 shows the descriptive statistics by type of supply chain innovation: redesign of shipment, inventory management systems, digital supply chain management, e-procurement, unique and automatic identification of products within the whole supply chain, reverse logistics and new delivery models, including the use of alternatively fuelled vehicles or multimodal logistics.

Each of these innovations relate to components of the global supply chain. For instance, the redesign of shipment relates to the redesign of the packagingfor example, using recyclable materialsin order to reduce the space needed for the storage of goods, alternative delivery methods and so forth. The inventory management system is a core component of an efficient and effective supply chain. Singh and Verma (2018, p . 3867) define it as 'the part of supply chain management that plans, implements and controls the efficient, effective, forward, and reverse flow and storage of goods, services, and related information between the point of origin and the point of consumption in order to meet customer's requirements'. Introducing an innovation in inventory management systems directly impacts on time-based competition, as well as on end user satisfaction.

Digital supply chain management refers to the digital knowledge management of the supply chain (Scuotto et al., 2017) . The current massive digitisation, accelerated by the global pandemic, along with the dominance of the knowledge paradigm, put digital supply chain management at the centre of scholar and practitioner conversations. E-procurement refers to the digital information systems related to the acquisition of supply. This aspect may play a discriminant role in global supply chain and during disruptions, such as the one caused by the global pandemic.

Reverse logistics is becoming increasingly important in terms of sustainability of supply chains (Rogers and Tibben-Lembke, 2001 ). Reverse logistics is 'the process of planning, implementing, and controlling the efficient, cost-effective flow of raw materials, in-process inventory, finished goods, and related information from the point of consumption to the point of origin for the purpose of recapturing or creating value or proper disposal' (Rogers and Tibben-Lembke, 1999, p. 2) . Table 4 shows the results of the multivariate analysis. Interestingly, the variable LogExp seems to be nonsignificant, whilst, by contrast, LogINN has a high level of statistical significance. In brief, supply chain innovation is a proxy of knowledge preparedness. Such a proxy is measured in terms of supply chain innovations introduced by firms before the COVID-19 outbreak. Therefore, the hypotheses of the model are confirmed. Table 5 shows results grouped by type of innovation. Supply chain innovations had a differentiated effect on disruption (supplies that are not delivered). For instance, in the medical supply chain, the innovations that were buffered from global disruption were those related to shipment, e-procurement, reverse logistics and unique and automatic identification of products. In general, inventory management innovations are the most important to avoid supply chain disruption. We also included the label 'other innovation', which refers to the survey questionnaire CIS, question 14.1. The respondents were asked to answer the question 'During the three years from 2014 to 2016 did your enterprise introduce any of the following innovations in logistics?' by choosing yes or no for each of the seven listed types of supply chain innovation. As an eighth item, 'other', was added when respondents introduced other types of supply chain innovations that were not listed among the choices. Finally, it is interesting to note that the control variable 'sentiment' had a poor effect on the supply chain, as explained by the two R-squared values, about 0,1 for both dependent variables, as shown in Table 6 .

This study originally examined the impact of knowledge preparedness on global supply chain disruption during the COVID-19 outbreak, achieving extremely important results.

Originally, the authors aimed at providing grounded evidence that supply chain resilience springs from knowledge preparedness, which is driven by innovation. The results show that the authors' hypotheses were largely confirmed. First, the results originally indicated that supply chain innovation is a proxy for supply chain knowledge preparedness at a level of extremely high statistical significance: F = 32,911 > Fsign = 0,000, and F = 138,688 > Fsign = 0,000.

This study extended the existing knowledge by unveiling the role of knowledge preparedness and innovation in building resilient supply chains (Sabahi & Parast, 2019) . Second, we found that supply chain innovation is a proxy for supply chain preparedness. In other words, knowledge management confirmed its paramount role for building firm resilience (Ali et al., 2017) through implementing continuous innovative processes based on knowledge acquisition, creation and sharing. Knowledge acquisition capabilities, knowledge generation capabilities and knowledge combination capabilities represent three relevant dimensions of knowledge-based dynamic capabilities Mital et al., 2018; Santoro et al., 2019; Sasson et al., 2017; Zheng et al., 2011) . Taking inspiration from these categories, the results confirmed the impact of knowledge acquisition capabilities and knowledge combination capabilities on knowledge preparedness as a new form of knowledge (not just operational) affecting readiness and the ability to prevent, detect and respond to unpredictable and harsh outbreaks. Combination capabilities are vital for sensing and reacting to disruptive events (Likoum et al., 2018) . In addition, using, recombining and sharing stocks of knowledge foster supply chain innovation. Thus, knowledge preparedness buffers firms from supply chain disruptions indeed.

According to results, the model's hypotheses were confirmed. Importantly, the results showed that knowledge preparedness mitigated the effects of the global supply chain disruption during the COVID-19 outbreak. Notably, the study showed that some supply chain innovations, such as shipment, e-procurement, identification of products and reverse logistics, are more important than others.

Intuitively, shipment affects the responsiveness to customers, which is an indicator of readiness. During the pandemic, the most essential need was a timely global sourcing of medical equipment, drugs and other goods for individual protection. An efficient and effective global sourcing is inherently tied to inventory management through automatic identification of goods and to e-procurement. Interestingly, reverse logisticsrelated to recycling and including all logistics activities that enable the return of used products in order to recapture the value or to implement proper disposal (Panjehfouladgaran and Lim, 2020 ) -also played an important role for global health. Sustainability of the supply chain will assume a paramount importance in forthcoming years.

Finally, sentiment indicators had almost no effect on global supply chain disruption. This last result is of a particular importance because it is counterintuitive and goes beyond expectations. Specifically, it identifies that the supply chain disruption was caused solely by a lack of preparedness because consumers kept demanding goods per usual. In other words, supply chain resilience is exclusively a knowledge matter.

Also, the results of the study confirmed knowledge as the paramount factor creating resilience and buffering firms during difficulties. Only knowledge can help to mitigate the consequences of supply chain disruption.

To the best of our knowledge, there is no prior research that tackled this gap in knowledge to date. Considering that COVID-19 outbreak permanently changed business dynamics, this study has opened up to a whole new panorama whose importance is ascertained by the different calls for solutions launched by organisations worldwide.

The impact of the study goes far beyond a mere theoretical contribution. It provides a direct and clear practical answer to managers and policymakers who seek to build resilient systems, as the aforementioned considerations would enable them to respond adequately to international supply chain disruptions. In fact, in an interconnected society, the supply chain has become increasingly global and complex over time. The COVID-19 outbreak showed the weakness of such a system, magnifying exponentially the social and economic repercussions of the global pandemic. Any future supply chain, along with the inherent architecture of economies, must be redesigned in order to exploit the interdependencies, minimising risk, because during harsh events avoiding global supply chain disruption matters in terms of life and death and takes a long time to rebound. For instance, when some of the vaccine supplies were disrupted the delay had a dramatic impact on health and business. Thus, the relevance of knowledge preparedness of the supply chain is unquestionable. To this end, the future supply chain should be thought in terms of system resilience, and continuous innovation may be the only weapon that can be used, as the empirical findings clearly show. Specifically the study underlined that some supply chain innovations, such as shipment, e-procurement, identification of products and reverse logistics, have a greater relevance than others to avoid international supply chain disruptions, increasing readiness, effectiveness and sustainability.

Despite the interesting results at the theoretical and practical levels, this study offers only a cross-sectional perspective of a limited period of time. Nevertheless, the general validity of the analysis and the concept is not affected by the time range. As a matter of fact, the cross-sectional analysis used in this case is well-suited to enabling correlations to emerge between variables, also making the results consistent and able to provide useful managerial insights in the long run.

Conversely, the theoretical and managerial significance of the study opens up several future perspectives of research. First, future scholars should investigate supply chain disruptions in cases of other global catastrophes, including human-driven ones (i.e. the global financial crisis). In addition, future studies should extend this cross-sectional analysis by adding longitudinal data when available. Finally, it is important to broaden the view of resilience by understanding other dynamics that may influence this variable. For instance, additional analyses should focus specifically on the contribution of digital technologies to the global supply chain during the COVID-19 outbreak. Notably, given the global dimension of current phenomena, a holistic approach to climate resilience should become central to the study.

In a nutshell, even though the dystopic scenario generated by the COVID-19 outbreak provided the rationale for and the motivation to do the current research, the study goes beyond the specific event to restate the critical relevance of the role of knowledge preparedness for firm and supply chain resilience, where supply chain innovation seems to be the primary contributor. In other words, the study clearly indicates the pathway for generating structural resilience in response to unpredictable events at firm and country-system levels, with positive effects on social well-being and global sustainability. Authors Definition Rice and Caniato (2003, p. 25) Resilience is widely used to characterize an organization's ability to react to an unexpected disruption, such as one caused by a terrorist attack or a natural disaster, and restore normal operations Christopher and Peck (2004, p. 2)

The ability of a system to return to its original state or move to a new, more desirable state after being disturbed Sheffi and Rice (2005, p. 41) The ability to bounce back from a disruption Datta et al. (2007, p. 189) Supply chain resilience is defined as not only the ability to maintain control over performance variability in the face of disturbance but also a property of being adaptive and capable of sustained response to sudden and significant shifts in the environment in the form of uncertain demands. Ponomarov and Holcomb (2009, p. 131) The adaptive capability of the supply chain to prepare for unexpected events, respond to disruptions and recover from them by maintaining continuity of operations at the desired level of connectedness and control over structure and function Kim et al. (2015, p. 287) Resilience is the capability of a[n] SCN to avoid disruptions or quickly recover from failures. Pettit et al. (2010, p. 1) The capacity for an enterprise to survive, adapt and grow in the face of turbulent change Jüttner and Maklan (2011, p. 247) Supply chain resilience addresses the supply chain's ability to cope with the consequences of unavoidable risk events in order to return to its original operations or move to a new, more desirable state after being disturbed. Blackhurst et al. (2011, p. 374) We specifically define supply chain resilience as a firm's ability to recover from disruptive events. Ponis and Koronis (2012, pp. 925-926) The ability to proactively plan and design the Supply Chain network for anticipating unexpected disruptive (negative) events, respond adaptively to disruptions whilst maintaining control over structure and function and transcending to a post-event robust state of operations, if possible, more favourable than the one prior to the event, thus gaining competitive advantage Wieland and Wallenburg (2013, p. 301) In this research, resilience is understood as the ability of a supply chain to cope with change. Melnyk et al. (2014, p. 36) The ability of a supply chain to both resist disruptions and recover operational capability after disruptions occur Day (2014, p. 3) (continued on next page) The capability to anticipate risk, limit impact, and bounce back rapidly through survival, adaptability, evolution, and growth in the face of turbulent change Hohenstein et al. (2015, p. 108) Supply chain's ability to be prepared for unexpected risk events, responding and recovering quickly to potential disruptions to return to its original situation or grow by moving to a new, more desirable state in order to increase customer service, market share and financial performance Ambulkar et al. (2015, p. 112) Firm's resilience to supply chain disruptions is defined as the capability of the firm to be alert to, adapt to and quickly respond to changes brought by a supply chain disruption.

Source: Ali et al. (2017, p. 22) . Table 4 Between subjects effects with alfa = 0,05, a. R-squared = 0,706 (Adjusted R-squared = 0,664), b. R-squared = 0,909 (Adjusted R-squared = 0,896). Table 5 Between subjects effects by type of innovation with alfa = 0,05, a. R-squared = 0,973 (Adjusted R-squared = 0,993), b. R-squared = 0,993 (Adjusted R-squared = 0,986).

Shaded data are highly significant. Table 6 Between subjects effects with sentiment indicator as independent variable with alfa = 0,05, a. R-squared = 0,126 (Adjusted R-squared = 0,067), b. R-squared = 0,164 (Adjusted R-squared = 109). 

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Will the COVID-19 pandemic make us reconsider the relevance of short food supply chains and local productions?

A paradigm shift in the global strategy of MNEs towards business ecosystems: a research agenda for new theory development

Innovative "bring-service-near-your-home" operations under corona-virus (COVID-19/SARS-CoV-2) outbreak: can logistics become the messiah?

Supply chain readiness, response and recovery for resilience

The agile supply chain: competing in volatile markets

Global crisis management-current research and future directions

The severity of supply chain disruptions: design characteristics and mitigation capabilities

Building the resilient supply chain

Agent-based modelling of complex production/distribution systems to improve resilience

Fostering emergent resilience: the complex adaptive supply network of disaster relief

Managerial practices and operative directions of knowledge management within inter-firm networks: a global view

What matters for knowledge sharing in collectivistic cultures? Empirical evidence from

Global knowledge intensive enterprises and international technology transfer: emerging perspectives from a quadruple helix environment

The role of external embeddedness and knowledge management as antecedents of ambidexterity and performances in Italian SMEs

Innovation and resilience

International trade and industrial upgrading in the apparel commodity chain

Does firm innovativeness enable effective responses to supply chain disruptions? An empirical study. Supply Chain Manag

A decision support system for demand management in healthcare supply chains considering the epidemic outbreaks: a case study of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19)

Global supply-chain effects of COVID-19 control measures

Performance measures and metrics in a supply chain environment

Supply chain resilience: role of complexities and strategies

Global supply chain design

Fast-mover advantages: speed capabilities and entry into the emerging submarket of Atlantic basin LNG

Gridlock, innovation and resilience in global health governance

Food supply chains during the COVID-19 pandemic

Supply chain collaboration and eco-innovations: an institutional perspective from China

Research on the phenomenon of supply chain resilience: a systematic review and paths for further investigation

The development of an instrument to measure readiness for knowledge management

Green supply chain collaborative innovation, absorptive capacity and innovation performance: evidence from China

Multivariate regression analysis for the item count technique

Predicting the impacts of epidemic outbreaks on global supply chains: a simulation-based analysis on the coronavirus outbreak (COVID-19/SARS-CoV-2) case

Viable supply chain model: integrating agility, resilience and sustainability perspectives

International gross capital flows: new uses of balance of payments data and application to financial crises

Can changes in the purchasing managers' index foretell stock returns? An additional forward-looking sentiment indicator

Supply chain resilience in the global financial crisis: an empirical study

Health security capacities in the context of COVID-19 outbreak: an analysis of International Health Regulations annual report data from 182 countries

Measuring employee readiness for knowledge management using intention to be involved with KM SECI processes

Supply network disruption and resilience: a network structural perspective

Investigating the relationship between supply chain innovation, risk management capabilities and competitive advantage in global supply chains

Market-sensing capability, innovativeness, brand management systems, market dynamism, competitive intensity, and performance: an integrative review

Knowledge management and organisational resilience: organisational innovation as a mediator in Uganda parastatals

Organisational resilience: testing the interaction effect of knowledge management and creative climate

Supply chain logistics, trade facilitation and international trade: a macroeconomic policy view

Building small firm performance through intellectual capital development: exploring innovation as the "black box

Global resource shortages during COVID-19: bad news for low-income countries

The effects of knowledge creation process on organizational performance using the BSC approach: the mediating role of intellectual capital

Understanding supply chain resilience

Fast and furious or slow and cautious? The joint impact of age at internationalization, speed, and risk diversity on the survival of exporting firms

Comparing supply chain risks for multiple product categories with cognitive mapping and analytic hierarchy process

Forecasting and planning during a pandemic: COVID-19 growth rates, supply chain disruptions, and governmental decisions

Reverse logistics risk management: identification, clustering and risk mitigation strategies

Improving innovation performance through knowledge acquisition: the moderating role of employee retention and human resource management practices

The relationship between firm resilience to supply chain disruptions and firm innovation

Disaster preparedness: a social-cognitive perspective

Disasters and communities: vulnerability, resilience and preparedness

COVID-19 outbreak: what should be done to avoid food shortages?

Ensuring supply chain resilience: development of a conceptual framework

The evolution of resilience in supply chain management: a retrospective on ensuring supply chain resilience

Supply chain resilience: definition of concept and its formative elements

Understanding the concept of supply chain resilience

Impacts of epidemic outbreaks on supply chains: mapping a research agenda amid the COVID-19 pandemic through a structured literature review

Technological capabilities and supply chain resilience of firms: a relational analysis using Total Interpretive Structural Modeling (TISM)

Enabling and leveraging ambidexterity: influence of strategic orientations and knowledge stock

Critical supply shortages-the need for ventilators and personal protective equipment during the Covid-19 pandemic

Supply chain resilience: definitions and quantitative modelling approaches-a literature review

Building a secure and resilient supply network

An examination of reverse logistics practices

Reverse Logistics Executive Council

Positioning change readiness in knowledge management research

Firm innovation and supply chain resilience: a dynamic capability perspective

COVID-19 in Europe: the Italian lesson

The Internet of Things: building a knowledge management system for open innovation and knowledge management capacity

Do knowledge management and dynamic capabilities affect ambidextrous entrepreneurial intensity and firms' performance?

A brave new world: lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic for transitioning to sustainable supply and production

Creation of knowledge-added concept maps: time augmentation via pairwise temporal analysis

Building routines for non-routine events: supply chain resilience learning mechanisms and their antecedents

A multiple buyer-supplier relationship in the context of SMEs' digital supply chain management

Phobias and preparedness

Conditioned drinking and its failure to extinguish: avoidance, preparedness, or functional autonomy?

Strategic agility in international business: a conceptual framework for "agile

A supply chain view of the resilient enterprise

COVID-19 and drug shortages: a call to action

Inventory management in supply chain

Impact of COVID-19 on logistics systems and disruptions in food supply chain

Top management team shared leadership, market-oriented culture, innovation capability, and firm performance

Research opportunities in supply chain transparency

Emerging issues on business innovation ecosystems: the role of information and communication technologies (ICTs) for knowledge management (KM) and innovation within and among enterprises

The influence of intellectual capital on the types of innovative capabilities

How do supply chain networks affect the resilience of firms to natural disasters? Evidence from the Great East Japan Earthquake

Supply chain capability creation: the creation of the supply chain readiness for a new product during product development process

Survival at the expense of the weakest? Managing modern slavery risks in supply chains during COVID-19

Knowledge sharing in supply chain networks: effects of collaborative innovation activities and capability on innovation performance

Global economic effects of COVID-19

The influence of relational competencies on supply chain resilience: a relational view

Overcoming blind spots in global sourcing research: exploiting the cross-sections between supply chain management and international business

Internal performance of an integrated supply chain: does flexibility matter?

Critical review of supply chain innovation research (1999-2016)

Monitoring transmissibility and mortality of COVID-19 in Europe

Analyzing the resilience of complex supply network topologies against random and targeted disruptions

Knowledge-based dynamic capabilities and innovation in networked environments