Institutional (ante)narratives of anticipatory entrepreneurial resilience: COVID-19 and the global entrepreneurship monitor

Abstract

The COVID-19 crisis severely impacted entrepreneurs worldwide, so that policy dispatches like the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor's (GEM) September 2020 special report, Diagnosing COVID-19 Impacts on Entrepreneurship: Exploring Policy Remedies for Recovery, were crucial for governments devising economic policies. Our paper examines how the GEM used institutional storytelling to craft anticipatory resilience, by drawing on the Communication Theory of Resilience and (ante)narrative approaches to anticipatory resilience. Findings demonstrated intersections of the GEM's role of resilience storyteller, as well as how resilience action by entrepreneurs and policymakers was narrated by the GEM. We uncover key tensions within the GEM's positioning as diagnostician and fortuneteller, between the resilient processes of normalizing and pivoting for everyday entrepreneurs, and in the institutionalizing work of policymakers through reacting and prospecting. We end by discussing key implications of our narrative approach to how institutions craft anticipatory resilience in response to global crises.