There is an imminent need to transition to a circular economy. For the textiles industry in Bangladesh, the sustainability crisis poses nested challenges such as regulatory changes, competitive discontinuity, technological disruption, and even social unrest. Textiles
manufacturers are scrambling to anticipate, cope and adapt; albeit not always successfully. The transition to a circular economy is a multifaceted problem that goes beyond the factory floor and involves market dynamics, supply chain constraints, socio-political issues, and more. It is not merely an operational shift but a transformation that requires both structural change and agency. That’s why multistakeholder collaborations, or initiatives, are essential for advancing circularity-driven issues and achieving sustainable industry outcomes.

In real-world scenarios, multistakeholder collaborations have shown that transition is far from linear and the outcomes often result from a complex negotiation process among stakeholders (Reinecke and Donaghey, 2015). The role of serendipity and the unanticipated effects of actions, such as a sudden spike in global demand for sustainable textiles or a political event affecting policy, dramatically alters the course of transition (Kaplan and Orlikowski, 2013). Thus, it becomes necessary to understand the broader environment in which these development processes are embedded – which encompasses a wide range of challenges, enablers, and barriers that organisations encounter in their pursuit of circularity.

Circularity efforts in the textiles industry for instance, can be mapped to resiliency capabilities of anticipation, coping and adaptation. Advancing circular product development using recaptured yarn for instance, develops the manufacturer’s capabilities of anticipation. Similarly, advancing issues of supply chain transparency helps strengthen coping capabilities, while improving carbon emissions enhances the manufacturer’s adaptation capabilities. But resiliency is a broad, ambiguous domain with limited guidance
on exactly what to do or how to prioritise between multiple issues. The current dialogue on organisational resiliency is mechanistic, which suggests that processes are largely controllable and predictable, and outcomes are attributable to managerial choices or
environmental conditions. Extant theories are either sequential (where actions unfold in sequence), or synthetic (where actions are described without any temporal pattern). Such deterministic models fail to capture the complex interplay of internal and external factors, nor a way to navigate the paradox of embedded agency.

A perspective that appreciates complexity, non-linearity, and the multi-agent nature of organisational phenomena is more aligned with contemporary research and practical realities. Theoretical lenses like Structuration theory (Giddens, 1984), Routine Interactions
(Soderstrom and Weber, 2020), and Resiliency Theory (Duchek, 2020) offer alternative frameworks that can be more informative for understanding strategic change in complex settings. Per Soderstrom and Weber’s (2020) structuration through interaction framework, individual (prioritising an issue in a dialogue) and collective-level (forming a steering committee) traces connect multi-level interactions about specific issues and generates organisational structures – policies, mechanisms and resources – to address those issues. It drives the structuration of organisational resiliency capabilities when the issues being advanced are resiliency-building.

Issue advancement is dependent on having higher quality interactions (Soderstrom and Weber, 2020). As there is greater organisational structuring around an issue, the traces change from potentially fleeting outcomes of a single situational interaction to more enduring outcomes of sequences of interactions. In this way, the outcomes of circularitydriven initiatives around resiliency-building issues are emergent in that they are not predetermined by external demands or internal constraints. Instead, resiliency development depends on the quality of interactions between stakeholders. By this logic, it is likely poor quality multistakeholder interactions directed structuration and mobilisation processes away from the most pertinent issues in real-world cases.

This link between situated routine interactions and advancement of resiliency-building issues could potentially explain the dynamic nature of organisational resiliency. How collaborative initiatives contribute to resiliency-building, and under what conditions, are
unexplored. Furthermore, if the interaction conditions are interrelated, what is the enabling configuration of interaction conditions for a faster transition to a circular economy? This study fills this gap by investigating how multistakeholder’s interaction context conditions in circularity-driven initiatives, influence the development of operational and relational organisational resiliency of the textiles manufacturer.

Methodology draws on critical realism and follows nine circularity-driven collaborations, or initiatives, across three textiles manufacturers in Bangladesh in a multiple case study. The initiatives consisted of three distinct issues for every manufacturer: one of anticipatory nature, another for coping, and a third, of adaptation. Every issue had objectives that were carried out or facilitated by multistakeholder meetings – the unit of analysis. Fieldwork captures qualitative data primarily from 27 observations of multistakeholder meetings, 27 semi-structured interviews of factory management folks, and 11 open-ended interviews of
industry experts. Fieldwork considers simultaneously the influence of multistakeholder interaction conditions and the resiliency structures in which those interactions are embedded. Conceptualizing these processual phenomena from Giddens’ (1984)
structuration lens, this dissertation develops a multistakeholder interaction model of resiliency development (Figure 9). It then dives into the crisis-resiliency nexus in an attempt to visualize the interplay of interaction conditions and mechanisms of resilience by
developing a routine dynamics model (Figure 10).

The findings in the study crystallises the notion that the effectiveness of developing resiliency through multistakeholder initiatives is contextually bound. Case study evidence reveals clear alignment of goals facilitates smoother decision-making processes and
alignment with regulatory compliance. Strong relationships are fostered among stakeholders, leading to increased trust and collaboration. Their ability to modify organisational structures allowed stakeholders to anticipate changes in the external
environment and adapt accordingly. Cross-functional teams were agile in adapting to new sustainability measures. Finally, a moderate approach to maintaining existing procedures helped in a balanced transition without disrupting existing workflows. The findings reveal the importance of being mindful of how strategies, structures, and routines, are enacted in daily operations and interactions. The intricacies lie not just in the presence or absence of specific factors but in their complex interactions, influenced by broader organisational structures and human agency. It finds different configurations of interaction conditions leads to different paths towards the formalisation of circularity-driven policies. Five patterns of issue advancement were observed: progressive, conservative, regressive, inflectional, and arrested structuring.

Five theories are derived that encompass various aspects of organizational advancement and resiliency within collaborative multistakeholder initiatives. They delineate how the pace of issue advancement – or the trajectory of structuring – varies based on routine interaction conditions. Successful initiatives transfer resiliency-building endowments to the manufacturer, enhancing its Operational and Relational Resilience. Strategic Alignment, coupled with governance mechanisms, moderates the relationship between Meeting Quality and Resilience. Structural Flexibility similarly moderates this relationship. Conversely, Routine Rigidity negatively moderates this relationship, particularly in contexts with low Strategic Alignment and Structural Flexibility, and influenced by inadequate Adaptive Governance and Stakeholder Engagement. This suggests a balanced profile of high Strategic Alignment (the director), high Structural Flexibility (the adapter), and moderate Routine Rigidity (the enforcer), is likely to accelerate resiliency development.

The study then makes five key assertions that offer a more holistic, integrated understanding of the newfound theories. First, goal alignment influences stakeholder engagement and organisational resourcefulness. A strong alignment between the trading partners and the textiles manufacturer makes for more effective stakeholder engagement and efficient resource allocation. Both of these elements are crucial for the development of operational and relational resiliency. Organizations with better strategic alignment can leverage multistakeholder initiatives more effectively to achieve goals faster. The identified patterns suggest that without alignment, stakeholders may not adequately commit resources, leading to ineffective resiliency development. The lack of this alignment can neutralize the positive impacts of structural flexibility and low routine rigidity.

Second, structural flexibility facilitates adaptive learning and collaboration efficacy. The ability of the governance structures to adapt and change influences how well the organization can learn and adapt, which in turn affects how effectively it can collaborate
both internally and externally. Governance structures, thus, indirectly influence both relational and operational resiliency through these mechanisms. A flexible structure allows for quicker pivoting when aligning with different stakeholder requirements, but it must be supported by other factors to be effective.

Third, routine rigidity affects internal cohesion and adaptive learning. The more rigid the routines around corporate accountability, the stronger the internal cohesion will be, as processes and roles are clearly defined. However, this rigidity could stifle adaptive learning,
as it may inhibit flexibility and openness to new ideas. This can be a double-edged sword for operational resiliency. Rigid routines make it challenging to integrate new practices proposed by multistakeholder initiatives, slowing down the transition to a circular economy.

Forth, interrelated moderating conditions create complex influences on resiliency. The findings indicate that the effectiveness of resiliency capabilities is intrinsically tied to the dynamic interplay between agency and structure, which can vary considerably because no single moderating condition operates in isolation. For example, structural flexibility could enhance stakeholder engagement by allowing more adaptive partnership models, which in turn could be influenced by how rigid or flexible the corporate accountability routines are. These complexities should be modelled for a more nuanced understanding of resiliency
development. The effectiveness of such initiatives is maximized when they are deployed in an environment where these moderating conditions are balanced.

Finally, the fragility of routine dynamics to situated interaction conditions increases the probability of failure of resiliency mechanisms. This study theorizes that a firm is resilient when routine dynamics accelerate the structuration of resiliency mechanisms that make up anticipation, coping and adaptation capabilities. By the same token, a firm is fragile when routine dynamics accelerate the structuration of failure mechanisms which impede the development of resiliency mechanisms. A crisis ensues when routine dynamics strengthen failure mechanisms beyond the tolerance of resiliency mechanisms.

These assertions help us understand that improving strategic harmony with collaboration partners, increasing organisational adaptability, and maintaining procedural uniformity could offer a pathway to enhance resilience effectively. To this end, a management tool – the Golden Triangle – is developed to help managers effectively rationalise multistakeholder interaction conditions and navigate resiliency-building in their organisation. It provides guidance for other textiles manufacturers aiming to foster
organisational resiliency while navigating the complexities of a circular economy transition. The multiple case study makes a contributions of theory refinement. This study develops a theory of continuously changing organisational resiliency capabilities. The emergent theory is cross-sectional (Eisenhardt, 2021), and conceptualizes time as a flow where processes of becoming are germane. It embeds a new construct – multistakeholder interaction quality – within a larger set of relationships. As the findings shows linkage between generic higher level routines and the effectiveness of developing resiliency capabilities of anticipation, coping and adaptation, the study contributes by elaborating the role of the managers’ deep understanding in improving the quality of multistakeholder interactions. Furthermore, this study’s synergistic positioning lays the foundation for future research on resiliency
development.