Not Either, Not Both, but Both in Tension: Paradoxical Pathways to Sustainability and Resilience in Supply Chains

Supply chains are now expected to remain dependable in the face of disruption while also meeting rising demands for environmental and social responsibility. Although both resilience and sustainability have become central concerns in contemporary supply chain management, their relationship is still often framed as a trade-off, as if strengthening one necessarily weakens the other. This study challenges that assumption by proposing that the sustainability–resilience nexus is better understood as a paradox: a condition in which competing demands remain simultaneously necessary, persist over time, and require continuous navigation rather than final resolution. Using a qualitative theory-building approach, the study draws on insights from a director, managers, Customer Supply Chain team leaders, three suppliers, and two customers. The findings show that actors initially interpret sustainability through the language of efficiency, waste reduction, and compliance, whereas resilience is associated with continuity, flexibility, and recovery capacity. Yet these categories become increasingly unstable in practice, where respondents face recurring tensions between lean operations and redundancy, standardisation and responsiveness, cost discipline and responsible practice, as well as immediate service needs and longer-term sustainability commitments. The study finds that such tensions are managed not through simple prioritisation, but through what is conceptualised here as dynamic relational balancing—an ongoing process of adjustment, coordination, negotiation, and learning across organizational boundaries. By shifting the conversation from trade-off to paradox, this study offers a more integrative explanation of how supply chains remain viable under pressure and contributes a new conceptual basis for understanding the joint pursuit of resilience and sustainability.