Supply chain robustness is widely promoted as a design principle for maintaining stability amid disruptions. However, recent global disruptions have revealed that robustly designed supply chains often fail in cascading, unexpected ways. This paper examines why robustness-oriented supply chain designs may simultaneously stabilize operations while generating latent fragilities.
The study adopts a conceptual theory-building approach using a deconstructive analytical lens. Drawing on supply chain management, complexity theory, and organizational theory, the analysis examines how robustness is constructed and operationalized through dominant supply chain design practices.
The analysis identifies four generative mechanisms: constitutive exclusion, stabilization through repetition, deferred resolution, and cyclical re-emergence of fragility, through which robustness practices stabilize operations while redistributing vulnerabilities across actors, system boundaries, and time horizons. These mechanisms explain how supply chains that appear stable under routine conditions may accumulate latent fragilities that become apparent when disruptions exceed the system's assumptions.
The paper contributes to supply chain management theory by reframing robustness as a performative and provisional organizational accomplishment rather than a stable design outcome. The framework clarifies why robustness-oriented practices may generate “robust-yet-fragile” systems and provides a conceptual basis for future empirical research on cascading disruptions in supply networks.
For managers, the findings highlight the importance of complementing robustness-oriented design strategies with diagnostic approaches that surface hidden dependencies and systemic vulnerabilities.
By applying a deconstructive perspective to supply chain robustness, the study offers a novel theoretical explanation for why robustness-oriented supply chain designs can inadvertently generate fragility.
