Crisis management in small and medium scale enterprises: a systematic literature review

Abstract

The study presents the findings of a systematic literature review of crisis management in Small and Medium Scale Enterprises (SMEs) referring to recent literature. Crisis management studies have received significant attention in academic research. This can also be observed in organizational crisis management. Compared to larger organizations, the attention received for SMEs was inadequate. Recognizing the dearth of SME crisis management studies in the existing literature of crisis management, this systematic literature review on SMEs aims to recognize the issues around academic research on SME crisis management and to identify the strategies applied by small business entrepreneurs against crisis vulnerability. Thus, two questions are addressed: what has been done in SME crisis management research, and what trends have marked this phenomenon in research arenas. This review considered 181 research articles published on SME crisis management since 2000. Exploring the existing SME crisis management literature identified three major themes: Crisis preparedness measures, Crisis impact on SMEs, and SMEs' strategic approach. Following the identification of gaps in the literature, the findings suggest future research areas of SME crisis management with organizational perspective, crisis experience towards crisis learning, crisis learning as a strategic approach, and networking as a social coping strategy. The synthesis action also directed future research in the field.