Purpose Are major and frequent disruptions transforming global supply chains? This study aims to investigate how multinational companies (MNCs) are responding to the phenomenon of accumulated major disruptions in recent years and plausible new paradigm of unstable conditions and environmental uncertainty from a supply chain resilience (SCRES) perspective. Design/methodology/approach Following an inductive interpretivist approach based on interpretive phenomenology, this study gathers insights from ten MNCs supply chain managers and international consultants who participated as key informants via semi-structured interviews, sharing their experience of the phenomenon. Additionally, secondary sources such as press releases, media articles and industry reports were used for data collection. Findings Findings include five categories of recovery actions, i.e. levelling, rationing, buffering, bridging and boundary redefining, key strategic changes in competitive priorities, internal organisation and coordination structures, and a hierarchy between SCRES characteristics, integrated in an empirically derived conceptual framework connecting these constructs. This contributes to middle-range theories within SCRES body of knowledge. The authors also identify a set of areas for future SCRES research. Practical implications Findings can support MNCs’ supply chain professionals in designing and managing resilient global supply chains, based on learnings from the recent highly disruptive environment, particularly, regarding recovery actions and resilience-building strategic changes contributing to agility and robustness in global supply chains. Originality/value Non-positivist interpretive and inductive works are scarce in SCRES research. By adopting this novel approach for this field, the authors broadened the categorisation of responses used in previous works and identified prominent strategic changes and SCRES characteristics and relations among constructs, thus bringing conceptual clarity to SCRES research within the context of the study.

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Purpose The purpose of this paper is to study the status of the individual self in the emergence of change initiatives in organizations. Design/methodology/approach This theoretical paper examines the emergence of change initiatives through the building of agents’ capacity to act, based on a theory of action inspired by Paul Ricœur. Findings This paper identifies the “course of recognition” to favor the emergence of change initiatives and the building of the capacity to act of agents, respecting the autonomy at the individual level, a sense of care at the group level and justice at the institutional level. Research limitations/implications The theoretical research can be extended with empirical studies dealing with the role of agents’ capacities in conflict management, the role of the “narrative self´” in change processes in organizations and the conjoint operationalization of autonomy care and justice to determine the agents’ capacity to act for initiatives to emerge. Practical implications It is important to develop a sense of shared leadership to nurture the capacity to act of agents to make change initiatives emerge in organizations, increasing organizational members’ feelings of being recognized. Originality/value So far, research has not provided satisfactory answers to the question about how to best initiate organizational change. The use of Ricœur’s theory of action adds value to the existing approaches as it addresses the source of the emergence of initiatives from agents’ feelings of their capacity to act, and integrates individual, group and institutional levels, which are rarely contemplated together.

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