Qualitative study reveals cyclical resource dependence shifts in critical raw material networks, indicating that heavy dependency leads firms to normalize geopolitical risks.
Key Points
To examine how critical raw material-dependent supply networks adapt their resource dependence strategies to geopolitical uncertainty across phases of the adaptive cycle.
Conducted a qualitative, sequence-structuring study based on semi-structured interviews with 19 informants (16 senior executives and 3 industrial experts) in a Nordic critical raw material supply network.
Analyzed primary interview transcripts abductively via thematic analysis, integrated with firm- and network-level secondary structural measures as contextual evidence.
During conservation and release phases, firms prioritize negotiating with the environment and avoiding dependencies to preserve short-term continuity under high uncertainty.
During reorganization and exploitation phases, firms absorb and reshape their external environments to restructure dependencies for long-term strategic renewal and growth.
Firms subject to extreme critical raw material dependencies tend to normalize persistent geopolitical risks rather than enact proactive adaptive responses.