This study, from the strategic perspective of manufacturers, reveals the foundational structure of supply chain network adaptability to the competitive environment and identifies the characteristics of manufacturers' combinative competitive capabilities accordingly. To this end, this study applied complex adaptive systems theory, which has been studied in physics and biology, to supply chain management in the field of business administration, thereby developing key attributes of supply chain network adaptability and conducting empirical analysis to present effective methods for managing supply chains from the perspective of complex adaptive systems. This study operationalized the concept of complex adaptive systems in the supply chain environment and developed a model to measure it, conceptualizing supply chain network adaptability as a combination of exploitation and exploration activities. It empirically demonstrated that the interaction between these two types of activities enables firms to search for opportunities to adapt future market conditions in their favor while simultaneously improving current capabilities and supply chain efficiency to secure short-term viability. Furthermore, the results of this study show that a firm's combinative competitive capability can be characterized as the accumulation of individual competitive capabilities, and that the acquisition of such combinative competitive capability can be achieved through the adaptive activities performed by the supply chain. Finally, by demonstrating that combinative competitive capability mediates the effect of supply chain network adaptability on business performance, this study presented methods for firms to effectively manage the performance of supply chain networks from the perspective of complex adaptive systems.