Sustainable Supply Chains Are More Resilient, and Vice Versa? If Only It Were That Simple!

ABSTRACT This paper scrutinizes the concepts of sustainability and resilience in the context of logistics and supply chain management. Building on foundational principles of sustainability, namely efficiency, consistency, and sufficiency, and on principles of resilience, namely persistence, adaptation, and transformation, we examine their interrelationship from a systems perspective. This perspective challenges the often‐implicit assumption that sustainability and resilience are inherently complementary. Instead, we argue that their relationship is shaped by context‐dependent tensions, trade‐offs, and non‐linear dynamics that resist universally positive (or negative) alignment. Drawing on an illustrative case of critical raw‐materials supply chains, we discuss how strategies aimed at enhancing resilience may reinforce unsustainable practices, while sustainability principles can introduce new forms of vulnerability. The paper highlights implications regarding the (sometimes undesirable) stabilizing effects of resilience, the fragility of circularity, and the limits of efficiency‐oriented supply chain strategies. It ends by calling for a more critical engagement with how resilience and sustainability are pursued and reconciled.