During the COVID-19 pandemic, several countries asked their domestic firms to produce various medical equipment. Many firms promised to do so, including redesigns of existing ventilators or designing new ones. Despite these firms' enthusiasm, however, many of their attempts at being resourceful- through deploying their resources in activities beyond their current use- were unsuccessful. Our study attempts to explain why the success of these efforts varied. We integrate concepts of resourcefulness, managerial cognition, and product architecture to develop a typology of resourcing approaches, using a firm's characteristics and resources, its interpretative frames, and the technical and regulatory characteristics of the product being resourced for as boundary conditions. We illustrate our theorizing through case studies on the manufacturing of face shields, hand sanitiser, face masks, and medical ventilators. Our study provides important implications for firms attempting to deploy their resources in new contexts.

在COVID-19大流行期间，几个国家要求其国内公司生产各种医疗设备。许多公司承诺这样做，包括重新设计现有的呼吸机或设计新的呼吸机。尽管有这些公司的热情，但他们进行了许多尝试以使其足智多谋-通过将其资源部署到超出其当前用途的活动中-不成功。我们的研究试图解释为什么这些努力的成功各不相同。我们利用公司的特征和资源，其解释框架以及作为资源获取条件的产品的技术和监管特征，整合资源丰富，管理认知和产品架构的概念，以开发资源分配方法的类型。我们通过有关面罩，手消毒器，口罩和医用呼吸机制造的案例研究来说明我们的理论。我们的研究为试图在新环境下部署其资源的公司提供了重要的启示。