Networks in Transition: Adaptive Cycles, Organizational Traps, and the Mechanisms of Supply Chain Resilience

Abstract

The inability of organizations to adapt to disruptive change represents one of the most consequential challenges in supply chain management. Motivated by the widespread failure of supply chains during the COVID-19 pandemic, this dissertation examines why organizations become entrapped in maladaptive configurations and explores the structural, behavioral, and communicative mechanisms that either enable or prevent adaptive response across three interconnected studies. Chapter 1 examines oscillatory reconfiguration in healthcare procurement, investigating how U.S. hospitals cycle in and out of Group Purchasing Organization (GPO) memberships in response to shifting structural conditions. Drawing on the Structure-Conduct-Performance paradigm and Dynamic Capabilities Theory, the study finds that hospitals engage in adaptive procurement cycling reflecting strategic responses to environmental pressures, with implications for operational resilience and supply chain disruption exposure. Chapter 2 develops a conceptual theory of how organizational learning processes produce and resolve adaptive cycle traps. Grounding the analysis in the socio-ecological adaptive cycle framework, the study identifies four traps — dissolution, rigidity, poverty, and vagabond — and theorizes that each corresponds to a distinct learning failure mode. Qualitative interview data from supply chain managers provides empirical grounding for the propositions. Chapter 3 reports a 2 × 3 between-subjects experiment with 685 supply chain professionals examining whether supervisor-delivered organizational nudges shape managers' long-term collaborative intent during disruption. Results demonstrate that adaptability-oriented supervisor communication produces significantly greater collaborative intent than agility-oriented communication, that agility orientation actively suppresses long-term collaborative thinking, and that nudge type drives behavioral contagion across supply chain boundaries. Across the three studies, this dissertation advances understanding of adaptive failure as a multilevel phenomenon rooted in structural procurement behavior, organizational learning dynamics, and everyday supervisor communication — offering theoretical and practical contributions for supply chain resilience in an era of persistent disruption.