Lessons learnt from COVID-19 vaccine operations and distribution performance: challenges and resilience strategies

Purpose Grounded in dynamic capability view, this research develops a decision support model, which enables determining consistent and sufficient configurations of resilience strategies to mitigate vaccine operations and distributions (O&D) challenges and thus improve O&D performance (i.e. O&DP). Design/methodology/approach Through qualitative in-depth interviews, the authors first identified challenges and resilience strategies related to vaccine O&D. Next, using the quality function deployment technique, three quantitative case studies were performed to determine the most important challenges and resilience strategies. Finally, utilising fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis, the authors determine sufficient conditions of challenges and strategies leading to improve vaccine O&DP. Findings The findings reveal that strategies alone are not effective instead a combination of strategies and nullification of challenges is needed to enhance vaccine O&DP. Further, the findings revealed that not only the presence of challenges, but also the lack of strategies reduces the vaccine O&DP. Practical implications The authors' findings will assist the health service decision-makers for strategizing an effective and efficient vaccination program by selecting the right combination of challenges and resilience strategies. Originality/value The authors' study develops a novel decision support model and offers significant learning for the future vaccine O&DP.