Cumulative and Congruent Capabilities Under Uncertainty: Conceptual Model for Integrating Sustainable Resilience

Amidst rising stakeholder expectations and recent disruptive events, manufacturing firms are re-evaluating strategies, focusing on sustainability and resilience. Operations managers face a resource allocation challenge balancing these priorities. This conceptual paper delves into sustainable resilience, exploring the relationships between congruent operations, network capabilities, and sustainable firm performance, considering uncertainty and sequential capability-building. Through conceptual literature review, this paper presents a conceptual model and associated hypotheses, laying the groundwork for an extensive empirical study. Building on the cumulative capability theory, we provide a nuanced perspective on the traditional Sand Cone model, emphasising sequence testing of operations and network capabilities. This approach paves the way for a multi-dimensional understanding of sustainable resilience. Addressing paradoxical tensions from trade-offs, our model outlines a path for subsequent research, aiming to guide firms through the journey of multiple priorities in today’s volatile environment.