Title: Resilience: resources and strategies of SMEs in a new theoretical framework

Authors: Fernando G. Alberti; Stefania Ferrario; Emanuele Pizzurno

Addresses: Institute for Entrepreneurship and Competitiveness, LIUC – Università Cattaneo, Corso Matteotti 22, 21053 Castellanza (VA), Italy ' Institute for Entrepreneurship and Competitiveness, LIUC – Università Cattaneo, Corso Matteotti 22, 21053 Castellanza (VA), Italy ' Institute for Entrepreneurship and Competitiveness, LIUC – Università Cattaneo, Corso Matteotti 22, 21053 Castellanza (VA), Italy

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.

Keywords: resilience; SME; small and medium-sized enterprises; italy; knowledge; resources; competitiveness; resource-based view of the firm.

DOI: 10.1504/IJLIC.2018.091969

International Journal of Learning and Intellectual Capital, 2018 Vol.15 No.2, pp.165 - 188

Received: 11 Jan 2017
Accepted: 10 Aug 2017
Published online: 23 May 2018 *

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