How can Finnish MNC B2B firms optimize their value chains during crisis, to create an ideal base for future operations?

The global business environment has experienced multiple disruptions over the past years, creating a constant need for firms to adapt and find new solutions to problems. This has forced firms to reevaluate and restructure their value chains to facilitate their business operations and overcome crises and the disruptions they cause. This thesis aims to understand the thought processes and decision-making Finnish MNCs have taken in response to these challenges. This will be done by understanding how disruptions such as covid-19 and the war in Ukraine have impacted the strategy and ways firms operate. While looking at the impact the disruptions have, the thesis looks into how international firms focus shifts away from their long-term strategy to their short-term survival strategy in order to increase resilience and recovery form disruption. This then shifts to allow MNCs to optimize their value chains for their future long-term strategy. The Thesis reveals that crises disruptions allow firms to optimize their value chain by improving firm agility during crises. This is by improving value chain agility which comes from the deeper understanding of the kinds of risks crises expose them to as well as revealing the kinds of partnerships MNCs have and their limitations. Allowing firms to modify their value chains, by choosing to reflect their values to the kind of partnerships they wish to have. Emphasising collaborative relationships and the non-tangible benefits certain partners bring in while being able to cut out partners who may not be as invested into the relationship between the firms.