Supplier resilience under the COVID-19 crisis in apparel global value chain (GVC): The role of GVC governance and supplier’s upgrading

The pandemic has exposed firms in global value chains (GVCs) to unprecedented disruptions and risks. This has highlighted the importance of resilience as a mechanism for recovery and adaptation that can underpin the survival of GVC firms. As such, researchers and practitioners alike are keen to understand the implications of suppliers’ resilience for GVCs and how these suppliers can absorb the tough shocks (e.g., sheer disruptions in supply and demand) caused by global incidents. We examined this issue by analysing data collected from firms in the Pakistani apparel sector that are part of the apparel GVC. Overall, we identified three main types of suppliers: 1) socio-sustainable, 2) adaptive and 3) oblivious. These suppliers implemented different resilience strategies (bridging, buffering and floating, respectively) during two phases of resilience (robustness and response). Importantly, we found that the distinctiveness of resilience strategies across different types of suppliers was influenced mainly by the GVC governance mode and suppliers’ upgrading practices before the crisis. We offered a detailed discussion of the implications of these findings for theory and practice.