Spatial Complexity and Sustainable Supply Chain Performance: The Mediating Role of Responsiveness in Resilience and Robustness

Spatial complexity has become a critical structuring situation in modern supply chains, where the word multiplicity, interdependence and degree of coordination is compacted into a single word, spatial configuration supply-chain activities. However, its increased topicality has been accompanied by an act of constant confusion with geographic dispersion in the analysis of empiric materials, thus leaving the structural implication of the supply-chain performance to be under-researched. It follows that the current paper questions the impact of spatial complexity on sustainable supply-chain resilience and robustness as it analyzes the moderating impact of supply-chain responsiveness. The investigation is based on the Resource-Based View and Dynamic Capabilities Theory, and the methodology of the study is deductive and quantitative. The data on surveys was collected among the firms that represent various industries in Saudi Arabia; the number of valid responses was 98. Measures of spatial complexity, resilience, robustness, and responsiveness were measured using adapted measurement scales and the hypothesized relationships were tested using Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modelling (PLS-SEM). The results of the empirical study show that spatial complexity and supply chain robustness have a strong negative correlation, which suggests that structurally complex supply chains have challenges trying to maintain the performance even in unfavorable conditions. On the other hand, spatial complexity has no direct harmful impact on resilience, but instead, responsiveness completely mediates the relationship between spatial complexity and resilience as a result, the essentialness of adaptive coordination and reconfiguration capabilities of complex spatial arrangement became prominent. There was no emergence of a mediating effect that ensures robustness to support one more differentiation of mechanisms in adaptive recovery and structural stability. By resocializing the concept of spatial complexity as an essential structuring feature, not as a proxy of dispersion this study not only adds to the development of the theory of supply-chain, but it also provides insights on how structurally complex supply chains can be designed.