EXTENDING THE CONTEXTUALIZED RESILIENCE-AGILITY ARCHITECTURE: TEMPORAL AMBIDEXTERITY IN CONSUMER GOODS SUPPLY CHAINS

Abstract

Consumer goods firms face a persistent tension between supply chain resilience and operating efficiency. Existing resilience research explains many of the capabilities firms require, but provides less guidance on when those capabilities should be activated as disruption conditions change. This study addresses that temporal gap by extending the Contextualized Resilience-Agility Architecture (CRAA) through a temporal ambidexterity perspective. Using a sequential multi-method design, the study combines a comparative multiple-case analysis of five U.S. and Chinese consumer-goods firms with longitudinal analysis of the 2026 U.S. import environment. Phase I identifies four recurring resilience mechanisms: selective slack, digital visibility linked to executable options, appropriately distributed decision rights, and ecosystem-level coordination. Phase II shows that the value of these capabilities is time contingent because sensing, plan revision, decision authorization, and physical execution operate on different horizons while operational choices become progressively less reversible. The study develops temporal ambidexterity as the ability to advance, delay, accelerate, or sequence supply chain commitments under uncertainty. It further introduces temporal selective slack, forecast revision capacity, temporal optionality, and temporal alignment to explain how firms preserve and exercise operational choices within narrowing decision windows. The resulting framework extends CRAA from a capability architecture toward a temporally contingent explanation of resilience and reframes resilience as the ability to preserve efficiency while committing neither too early nor too late.