Relationship agility practices as a dynamic relational capability for relocating business activities during exogenous shocks

Relocating business activities during exogenous shocks such as pandemics and geopolitical disruptions exposes firms to heightened uncertainty, compressed decision timelines, and intensified relational tensions. Although prior research highlights organizational agility as critical in turbulent environments, comparatively limited attention has been devoted to how agility is relationally enacted through interorganizational interactions when relocation occurs under crisis conditions. This study examines how business relationship dynamics evolve during crisis-induced relocation and how firms mobilize relational capabilities to manage disruption. Drawing on two longitudinal case studies from the aviation industry in Sweden and Australia during the COVID-19 pandemic, we demonstrate that agility is not merely an internal adaptive capability but is enacted relationally through ongoing coordination, renegotiation, and network reconfiguration. We introduce the concept of Relational Agile Practices (RAP) to explain how firms stabilize, reconfigure, and expand relationships at both dyadic and network levels under extreme uncertainty. By specifying the mechanisms through which firms preserve and renew relational value during crisis-driven relocation, this study extends dynamic capabilities research, advances the relational view of the firm, and contributes to research on regional geography by showing how spatial reconfiguration reshapes relational dependencies and network positioning.