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This paper aims to comment on resilience research within the context of frontline employees in sales and services marketing.

This commentary is a reflection based on my research, extant academic and managerial literature and personal perspectives.

Research findings show resilience is associated with increased employee effort and reduced turnover intentions in customer-facing roles. In addition, resilience can change over time and is not just a trait the employee is born with (or not). Hence, managers can cultivate resilience in employees.

Resilience cannot be purchased. Instead, managers can inspire resilience in frontline employees by developing their feelings of self-efficacy on the job, a sense of belongingness to the organization and peers and a sense of purpose and relatedness to customers.

Resilience is not merely perseverance or grit; it is overcoming adversity and bouncing back to become better in the process. Thus, resilience is an important construct to study, particularly in customer-facing roles.

This commentary offers a unique approach to understanding resilience, its outcomes and its antecedents in customer-facing roles.

The purpose of this study is to examine the effects of leader mindfulness on employee safety behaviors by focusing on the mediating role of employee resilience and the moderating role of perceived environmental uncertainty.

The authors surveyed 248 employees in the high speed railway company of China in three waves with a two-week interval. Hierarchical regression analysis was used to test the hypotheses. The mediating effects and the moderated mediation effects are further tested with bias-corrected bootstrapping method.

Leader mindfulness positively affects employee safety compliance and safety participation, and these relationships were mediated by employee resilience. Perceived environmental uncertainty moderated the effects of leader mindfulness on employee resilience and the indirect effects of leader mindfulness on safety behaviors via employee resilience.

The findings elucidate the significance of leader mindfulness in promoting employee safety behaviors in the workplace.

The purpose of this study is to suggest an approach to regain consumer trust after negative effects of greenwashing that draws corporations and consumers into a conflicted relationship.

The authors collect and interpret qualitative data from in-depth interviews to develop a theoretical approach that enables the rebuilding of trust between greenwashing corporations and their consumers using the concept of psychological resilience.

This analysis indicates that the approach is an interaction between consumers with green brand loyalty and greenwashing corporations. This type of consumer demands emotional factors, functional factors and legitimate factors in the process of psychological resilience, and after greenwashing, corporations should select appropriate recovery strategies to stimulate these protective factors.

Previous research studied green consumer trust in the marketing field but did not explore the core of trust which was regarded as a cognitive process. This paper investigates green consumer behaviour under the perspective of psychological resilience and makes an innovative attempt to understand drivers of regaining consumer trust. Previous research works put forward a series of strategies related to regaining trust, but they did not discuss the mechanisms by which these strategies work. Using the method of grounded theory, we attempt to reveal the “black box” of consumers cognition after greenwashing and propose a strategy for regaining consumer trust.

After completion of the case study, the students would be able to identify and evaluate organizational culture as a critical element of organizational resilience and assess its fit to the business context, evaluate different elements of organizational resilience and their contribution to business adaptation and develop leadership approaches that help adapt and leverage organizational culture to foster individual, team and organizational resilience.

This teaching case covers topics of organizational leadership, including organizational culture and organizational resilience. This case study is appropriate for the postgraduate and executive education programmes. This case study covers the approach to organizational leadership and resilience of the OKKO, a Ukrainian retail petrol station network. The dilemmas considered by top managers of the company emerged in February–April 2022 amid the unfolding Russian invasion of Ukraine. The case study protagonists solved multiple business and organizational dilemmas to continue efficient business operations while allowing the organization to adapt to a complex and fast-changing environment. They leveraged a distinct corporate culture, strong employee engagement and established business processes and management practices to ensure the viability of the business.

This case study is appropriate for postgraduate and executive education programmes. The level of difficulty is light to medium. Recommended pre-requisites are understanding human resources management terminology and reviewing preparation materials. The case study is suitable for teaching courses in leadership, people management and organizational development that cover corporate culture, leadership and organizational resilience.

CSS 6: Human resource management

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

To build resilient supply chains, buyers should implement risk mitigation tactics. The purpose of this paper is to provide insights into the risky decision-making process that underlies buyers’ decisions to adopt supply risk mitigation tactics for creating supply-side resilience.

The authors employ experimental scenarios to simulate supply disruptions of low and high likelihood. The authors then assess buyers’ decisions to adopt supply risk mitigation tactics in response to these scenarios.

The authors find that buyers’ perceptions of supply disruption likelihood are positively related to their adoption of buffer- and process-oriented risk mitigation tactics and preference for process-oriented risk mitigation tactics. Conversely, risk propensity negatively affects buyers’ adoption of buffer- and process-oriented mitigation tactics.

Beyond risk perceptions, the authors consider how risk propensity also affects the risky decision-making process. Moreover, whereas previous studies often focus on a single mitigation tactic, the authors study buyers’ adoption of multiple buffer- and process-oriented risk mitigation tactics to create supply-side resilience.

Building on the information processing perspective, the authors propose that both internal and external supply chain risk management (SCRM) practices play essential roles in mediating supply chain disruption orientation (SCDO) to exercise an influence on resilience. The authors also put forward analytics capability as an important moderator in the above-mediated relationship.

The authors collected 170 match-paired questionnaires from Chinese firms to test our model. The authors further interviewed some managers to supplement key quantitative results.

First, SCDO positively affects resilience via internal and external SCRM practices. Second, the mediating effects of internal and external SCRM practices are stronger when analytics capability is higher. Third, analytics capability positively moderates the positive effect of SCDO on SCRM practices. Meanwhile, it does not moderate the positive effect of SCRM practices on resilience.

Our study contributes to SCRM-related and IT-related literature by considering the content, mediating mechanisms (i.e. internal and external SCRM practices) and boundary conditions (i.e. data analytic capability) of SCDO in shaping resilience in the digital supply chain.

Our study helps remind managers that firms build disruption orientation, develop different SCRM practices and leverage analytics capability to improve resilience amid unexpected and unplanned disruptions.

Our study sheds light on the roles of both internal and external SCRM practices. Furthermore, this research helps explain how SCDO motivates resilience through SCRM practices, particularly for those firms that have higher analytics capability.

This study aims to examine the role of eco-label hotel engagement as a pathway to sustainable practices via scouting entrepreneurial resilience and orientation at highly ranked hotels in Oman. The authors developed and tested a novel model built on resilience theory, the theory of entrepreneurial orientation and the theory of reasoned action (TRA).

Data from 167 human resources directors, hotel managers and other employees were analyzed by partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) and fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA).

Results indicate a strong positive relationship between entrepreneurial resilience and entrepreneurial orientation. Entrepreneurial orientation significantly increased all eco-label strategies, but not all strategies enhanced sustainable tourism practices. High adoption of sustainability practices depended on core strategies related to awareness, benefits, reputation and necessity, but the cost was also an issue. Managers adopted sustainability practices if they were not perceived as costly, or when perceived as costly if they believed they would help them reduce operating costs.

Policymakers should assist hotel managers when the sector is hit by political events, natural disasters or health crises such as the current pandemic can bounce back and develop their resilience. Likewise, training and workshops can be organized to improve managers’ entrepreneurial mindset, which was found to be a precursor to favorable attitudes toward sustainability.

This study tests a novel model built on three theories: resilience theory, the theory of entrepreneurial orientation and the TRA by using PLS-SEM and fsQCA.

This study aims to investigate the relationship between employee polychronicity and employee creativity. This study also explores the mediating role of employee resilience in the relationship between employee polychronicity and employee creativity.

This study was based on a quantitative research design, and a survey instrument was used to collect data from doctors and nurses. Ordinary least squares (OLS) regression and four-step Baron and Kenney (1986) approaches were used to check the impact of nurses’ polychronicity on creativity through resilience.

Results proved that employee polychronicity positively influences employee creativity. The finding indicates that employee resilience acts as a mediator in the relationship between employee polychronicity and employee creativity.

The worth of this study rests on the deeper understanding of the employee polychronicity–employee creativity link in the health-care sector. Moreover, by bringing to the fore employee resilience as a mediator of the polychronicity–creativity relationship, this study provided a new vantage point to explore the intricacies concerned with the relationships between polychronicity, resilience and creativity.

This study aims to identify the barriers to building supply chain resilience and assess the contextual relationship between them in the Indian micro, small and medium enterprise (MSME) sector for the post COVID-19 era.

Barriers to supply chain resilience were extracted from the extant literature and were evaluated using the grey sets and Decision-Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory (DEMATEL) approach from strategic, tactical and operational business perspectives. The responses from experts on the identified barriers were collected through a structured questionnaire. The prominence-net effect results obtained after the DEMATEL application helped identify the most prominent barriers, their net cause and effect, and their correlation with each other.

A total of 16 barriers to resilience, identified from the literature, were considered for analysis. The findings of the study revealed that the lack of flexibility is the most critical causal barrier to building a resilient supply chain. Lack of planned resource management was also found to be an influential barrier. The study also identified the supply chain design, need for collaboration and technological capability as important factors for the MSME sector to focus on.

The study is limited to assessing barriers to the supply chain resilience of MSMEs in India. More extensive research may be needed to reveal the global trend.

The study is significantly important for the MSMEs looking to establish resilient supply chains. Managers can use the findings to identify the weak links in the supply chain for strategic and tactical planning and can take corrective actions.

The study pinpoints the key linkages between barriers that impede MSMEs to make their supply chains resilient and robust to mitigate the impact of future disruptions and adversities. The work may be used by practitioners to further their attention on the significant challenges.

The study tries to identify the barriers influencing supply chain resilience and examine the inter-relationships between them. These relationships are built on the basis of how one barrier drives or is driven by the changes in another barriers.

In the first phase, literature review and with due discussion with experts, the barriers have been identified and shortlisted for an Indian automotive case company. In the second phase, total interpretive structural modelling (TISM) has been applied to examine inter-relationships between the barriers for an Indian automobile case company. Matrice d'impacts croisés multiplication appliquée á un classment (MICMAC) analysis has also been performed to analyse the driving and dependence power of the barriers.

In total, 11 barriers are identified from the first phase of the study. In the second phase, the TISM digraph is created which qualitatively explains the reason behind how one barrier leads to another. MICMAC analysis classifies these variables in four clusters namely autonomous, linkage, dependent and independent. These clusters characterise the barriers based on their driving and dependent power which helps managers in strategically tackling them while taking understanding from the TISM digraph.

Three research implications can be made from the study. First, a comprehensive definition of supply chain which helps in understanding of resilience based on disruption phases and recovery. Second, 11 barriers are identified which hinder resilience in automotive sector. Their relationships are modelled using TISM which also gives why a particular relationship exists. Last, MICMAC analysis classifies barriers based on how high or low the driving and dependence power exists.

The study offers significant implications for supply chain managers helping them in building resilience by identifying barriers and reducing their effect. Barriers are identified for case company which might help managers to tackle them during disruptions. The final TISM digraph depicts the “why” between the inter-relationships between the barriers to resilient supply chains. TISM shows that non-commitment of top management is the major root barrier which has been causing the other problems. MICMAC analysis is also performed along with discussion as to how autonomous, linkage, dependent and independent barriers can be tackled to build resilience.

TISM is considered as an effective methodology for conceptual framework development as it also explains “why” between the relationships besides explaining the “what” as against ISM. Identification and understanding of barriers and their interrelationship will help supply chain managers to analyse the influence and inter-dependence of barriers on the resilience of the supply chain. Such understanding will help in mitigating/averting these barriers hence improving the resilience capability. It also adds to the knowledge base in the area of supply chain resilience where several authors have pointed the lack of research.