The Concept of Resilience in Supply Chain: A Grounded Theory Approach Peyman Akhavan Qom University of Technology Qom, Iran Lila Rajabion School of Graduate Studies, SUNY Empire State C New York, USA Lila.Rajabion@esc.edu Maryam Philsoophian Abstract—Today, despite the fact that most of the supply chains have a suitable structure and high operative effectiveness, quick changes in the business environment, the high number of innovations, customer’s expectations and requirements, increased communication between suppliers, manufacturers, and distributors all contribute to high levels of uncertainty, disruptions, chaotic behaviors, challenges and threats in supply changes. These unexpected risks and natural inevitable changes force supply chain management to adopt new and innovative approaches in order to deal better with risk-related disruptions. The resilient supply chain is one of these approaches. The goal of this study is to use the grounded theory method to investigate the concept of resilience and identify each of the resilience factors in supply chain studies. Adaptability, reversibility/recovery, versatility, reactivity, response to disruption, and the ability to continue working in difficult situations were identified as six main concepts for improving supply chain resilience as a result of analyses. This article will help researchers in their understanding of the concept of supply chain resilience and the factors that influence it. Keywords: Supply Chain Management, Grounded Theory, Supply Chain Resilience I. INTRODUCTION (HEADING 1) Supply chain management, according to the traditional definition, entailed directing all parts of the supply chain in an integrated and coordinated manner with the goal of improving performance, productivity, and profits, and supply chain managers only sought to deliver goods and services faster, lower the costs, and increase quality in a static environment. However, in today's world, unstable and dynamic business conditions such as globalization, increased outsourcing of activities, increased demand fluctuations, shortened product life cycles, drastically reduced inventories, and tighter competition among companies lead to a high level of uncertainty and behavior. Supply chain disruptions have resulted from a variety of factors (Katsaliaki et al, 2021). As a result, supply chains today face a variety of challenges and threats, including global economic crises, natural disasters such as floods, earthquakes, hurricanes, fires, sanctions, and disruptions in supply, production, and distribution systems, all of which can result in supply chain failure. Supply chain disruption reduces competitiveness, customer satisfaction, and profitability. As a result, if supply chain activities fail to properly manage unforeseen disruptions, they may suffer negative consequences, increasing the risk of business interruption and resulting in significant financial losses (Christopher and Peck, 2004, Philsoophian et al, 2021). The process and flow of value, control, supply, demand, and environment are all part of supply chain shock and disruption that enter the supply chain both externally and internally. Inventory shortages, changing design needs, production stall, logistic weakness, and human constraint can all be caused by supply chain shocks (Park et al., 2013). therefore, in order to overcome them, the supply chain’s designs must be in such a way that they should be ready for any kind of event, so they can be able to return to the original state or even a better state while providing an efficient and effective response, which is the extant meaning of flexibility (Ponomarev and Holcomb, 2009). According to Sheffi (2005), to return to the state prior to the disorder, or even move to a new situation that is more desirable than before, as well as the ability to keep business running in the event of a disruption, and thus increase the company's competitiveness and customer satisfaction, Supply chain resilience is critical for any organization or industry, and its importance in the face of supply chain failures should not be overlooked because resilient businesses are less vulnerable to supply chain failures and better able to manage them. In this paper, we are trying to extract the main factors of supply chain resilience by investigating the definitions and concepts of supply chain resilience. The following is the main question that will be addressed in this article: What factors are essential in boosting supply chain resiliency? 1881 2021 International Conference on Computational Science and Computational Intelligence (CSCI) 978-1-6654-5841-2/21/$31.00 ©2021 IEEE DOI 10.1109/CSCI54926.2021.00353 2021 International Conference on Computational Science and Computational Intelligence (CSCI) | 978-1-6654-5841-2/21/$31.00 ©2021 IEEE | DOI: 10.1109/CSCI54926.2021.00353 Authorized licensed use limited to: UNIVERSIDADE FEDERAL DO ESPIRITO SANTO. Downloaded on July 01,2022 at 14:26:30 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply. Malek Ashtar University of Technology Tehran, Iran Philsoophian@mut.ac.ir Akhavan@qut.ac.ir