A Contemporary Review of the Resilience Literature: State-of-the-Art and Future Research Opportunities

Socio-economic, health and environmental turbulences experienced during the past decades have caused major value chain disruptions, triggering multinational enterprises (MNEs) to rethink the footprints of their global operations and redesign for resilience. These developments have fueled a rapidly expanding scholarly literature on resilience. Yet, its conceptual understanding and practical utility remain highly fragmented, cross-disciplinarily disconnected and ambiguous. This study explores the intellectual structure of resilience research in business and management, relying on a systematic literature review approach based on bibliometric techniques and content analysis. A unique database consisting of 545 peer-reviewed articles published in 65 leading Academic Journal Guide (AJG) journals are analyzed. Based on the findings, three leading research communities dominate the resilience discussion in business and management. Moreover, the intellectual structure of the field through the most productive authors and top cited journal articles is discussed. Based on the results, five potential research avenues are suggested.