**6. Conclusion**

To enhance the prevention ability of resilience to deal with opportunistic behaviors by suppliers and further maintain effective sustainability, this study explored two

#### *Enhancing the Resilience of Sustainable Supplier Management through Combination with Lean… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.102465*

research questions: How do manufacturers make good use of pull production and employee involvement under lean practices that can strengthen supplier management robustness and enhance the prevention ability of resilience to deal with opportunistic behavior? Why does the combination of lean with an audit mechanism strengthen the practice effect of pull production and employee involvement and even produce synergy to prevent and control opportunistic behavior by suppliers?

According to the test results, effective practice of pull production and employee involvement can enhance responsible purchasing, emergency-response ability, and manufacturing process coupling and further strengthen supplier management robustness, which enhances the prevention ability of resilience to deal with opportunistic behavior. In addition, enhancing manufacturing process coupling has an indirect effect, strengthening emergency-response ability and further enhancing the prevention ability of resilience. The audit mechanism can control the dysfunctional behavior of the supplier, further guiding cooperation with the practice of pull production and employee involvement; in addition, audits trigger the supplier's trade-off mindset in terms of risk and profit maintenance. Based on the prior discussion, this trade-off mindset can enhance the ability of resilience to prevent and control opportunistic behavior.

Regarding the academic implications of this study, although some conflict exists between lean and resilience, our research proved that if manufacturers make good use of pull production and employee involvement when implementing lean, it can enhance manufacturing process coupling, responsible purchasing, and emergency-response ability; strengthen supplier management robustness; further enhance the ability of resilience to prevent and control opportunistic behavior. Therefore, our research results provide a new vision and expand research knowledge on the relationship between lean and resilience. In terms of practical implications, our research results can help manufacturers to understand the importance of the practice of pull production and employee involvement under lean practices and guide manufacturers to think about how to establish an effective audit process and environment to strengthen the practice efficiency of pull production and employee involvement to enhance the prevention ability of resilience to deal with opportunistic behavior by suppliers.

Although our research results provide many valuable suggestions, there are a few limitations. First, although the research results explained how the practice of pull production and employee involvement under lean practices can enhance resilience to maintain sustainable supplier management, how to effectively practice these two mechanisms has not been explored. In addition, the research results clarified why the combination of lean and audits can produce synergy for enacting resilience; however, a method to design an effective audit process is also lacking. Future research can explore these two limitations in greater depth.

## **Acknowledgements**

This study was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC, Grant no. 71872131) and STU Scientific Research Initiation Grant (SRIG, Grant no. 20007).

## **Conflict of interest**

The authors declare no conflict of interest.
