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In today’s ever-shifting and unpredictable local and global markets, enterprises are in constant pursuit of strategic solutions to fortify their resilience and counter the pervasive uncertainty that looms over potential disruptions. The last few years have witnessed unprecedented challenges, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, which have presented formidable hurdles to business operations, causing interruptions or, in some cases, complete standstills in the seamless flow of information, raw materials, and finished goods (Baral et al., 2022; Yao & Azma, 2022; Zhao et al., 2023). Faced with these formidable challenges, a growing number of contemporary enterprises are embracing a paradigm shift. They are progressively moving away from traditional business models and gravitating toward digital transformations, with cloud-based enterprise resource planning (cloud ERP) emerging as a pivotal solution. This strategic shift is not only instrumental in ensuring uninterrupted business operations but also in gaining a competitive advantage amid the rising tide of uncertainties (Ali et al., 2023; Y. W. Chang et al., 2019; Dudezert et al., 2023).
Advanced technology such as cloud ERP offers numerous benefits to businesses, including improved operational efficiency, streamlined processes, scalability, cost savings, real-time data access, enhanced collaboration, and flexibility (Ahn & Ahn, 2020; Fan et al., 2021; Guo & Wang, 2020). It enables organizations to adapt quickly to changing business needs, optimize resource utilization, and make data-driven decisions for sustainable growth. As such, in the wake of a highly uncertain and disruptive business landscape, recent research started exploring the link between cloud ERP and enterprise resilience (ER; Guo & Wang, 2020; Gupta et al., 2020; Yao & Azma, 2022).
ER cultivates readiness, response, and recovery capabilities to gain an equilibrium position in response to disruptions (Hendry et al., 2019). The readiness, for instance, enables proactively deploying capabilities to avoid possible business vulnerabilities before an incident happens (Kamalahmadi & Mellat-Parast, 2016). The response allows for resistance to disruptions when an incident materializes to mitigate the magnitude of losses. The recovery, following the first two stages, supports quick rebound from disruptions while achieving a normal or even better than a pre-disruptive stage (Ali et al., 2022).
Exploring the interconnection between cloud ERP and ER, many researchers (AlBar & Hoque, 2019; Jesus & Lima, 2021; Sultana et al., 2022) espoused that the adoption of cloud ERP supports information sharing, agility, connectivity, and visibility, contributing to different elements of ER (Avikal et al., 2021; Busto Parra et al., 2021; Roumani & Nwankpa, 2019). Gupta et al. (2020) and Roblek et al. (2021), for example, argued that cloud ERP facilitates data consolidation and transmission, collaboration, and alertness to new incidents, thus supporting readiness to mitigate disruptive impacts. Cloud ERP also assists in readiness for unforeseen events by integrating information systems and improving enterprise information processing capabilities (Y. Chang et al., 2019; Wang et al., 2022). Regarding the response, cloud ERP enables enterprises to respond timely to market changes such as customer requirements through asset tracking, information sharing, and order fulfillment automation (Hustad et al., 2020; Ma et al., 2021). As for the recovery, cloud ERP plays a facilitative role in enhancing cutting-edge capabilities, including real-time reconfigurations, increased data retention, redundancy or disaster recovery and thus rebounding emergency plans in case of unprecedented events (Jesus & Lima, 2021; Pirmanta et al., 2021). As such, cloud ERP ameliorates ER with three pillars in mind: readiness, response, and recovery.