Resilience: Resources and strategies of SMEs in a new theoretical framework

Abstract

The issue of the ability to survive and successfully compete in a turbulent business environment (i.e., resilience) is becoming more and more noteworthy within entrepreneurial, managerial and strategic studies (Pal et al., 2014; Linnenluecke, 2017). Although small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are defined the backbone of the economy in many countries (Cowling et al., 2015) these are less studied from the resilience angle. While there exists in literature a strong focal point around which definitions and theory building are constructed, there is a lack of empirically testing and demonstrating of such theories. There is little empirical evidence on how organisations, especially SMEs, may achieve degrees of resilience. Thus the purpose of this paper is to skim among all the key enablers that emerge from literature and identify strategic and managerial features that more likely could support SMEs to obtain a certain level of resilience.