Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate how entrepreneurial behaviors support small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) resilience, refine the concept of entrepreneurial resilience, and identify how SME resilience might be promoted. Design/methodology/approach Qualitative data were collected in the UK via 11 focus groups which provided a sub-sample of 19 SME participants. Findings Because of their experience operating in uncertain environments, their direct experience of adversity, and the informal organizational settings they inhabit, entrepreneurs are often highly resilient and possess capabilities that enable SMEs to be resilient. Entrepreneurial resilience provides a basis for SME resilience that differs significantly from best practices as understood in larger firms. Research limitations/implications Exploratory qualitative research on a small sample (n=19) limits the generalizability of this work. Further research could quantitatively test the paper’s findings and/or examine the link between entrepreneurial resilience and the resilience of larger firms. Practical implications Rather than encouraging formal planning and redundancy, policy and practice designed to promote the resilience of SMEs should pay greater attention to building capacities to cope with uncertainty, generating and leveraging personal relationships, and activating the ability to experiment and think creatively in response to crises. Originality/value This paper draws on organizational psychology research to refine understanding of entrepreneurial resilience and to empirically examine and inductively theorize the multi-level relationships between entrepreneurial resilience and SME resilience.

This paper is a first step towards addressing a gap in the field of organisational resilience research by examining how small and medium enterprises (SME) manage the threat and actuality of extreme events. Pilot research found that the managerial framing of extreme events varied by a range of organisational factors. This finding informed further examination of the contextual nature of the resilience concept. To date large organisations have been the traditional focus of empirical work and theorising in this area, and yet the heterogeneous SME sector makes up approximately 99 percent of UK industry and routinely operates under conditions of uncertainty. In a comparative study examining UK organisational resilience, it emerged that SME participants had both a distinctive perspective and approach to resilience when compared to participants from larger organisations. This paper presents a subset of data from 11 SME decision-makers. The relationship between resilience capabilities, such as flexibility and adaptation, is interrogated in relation to organisational size. The data suggests limitations of applying a one-size-fits-all organisation solution (managerial or policy) to creating resilience. This study forms the basis for survey work examining the extent to which resilience is an organisationally contingent concept in practice.

COVID-19 is profoundly affecting almost all aspects of economic and social life globally. Governments have closed borders, banned mass gatherings, and enforced social distancing, generating a new normal for businesses and individual citizens. Measures taken to protect public health have threatened the global economy, necessitating economic stimulus in most countries, and reconfiguring the role of business in society. We ask: Will the role of business in society return to normal after COVID-19, or will it be reconfigured in enduring and impactful ways? We use Alexander's (2018Alexander's ( , 2019 theory of societalization to examine how socially disruptive extreme events affect the role of business in society. To evidence this, we apply societalization to the revelatory example of COVID-19 and evaluate its impacts on society.Our analysis of the societalization of COVID-19 in the United States shows that concern regarding pandemic disease has moved from the governmental inside to the civic outside, placing strain on society, leading to regulatory response, and a significant societal backlash. We discuss three scenarios regarding the long-run impacts of COVID-19 on the role of business in society, suggest that societalization provides useful insights into other socially disruptive extreme events, and identify implications for future business and society research.

absolute reductions in emissions are associated with significant reductions in firms' emissions. Our evidence suggests the need for vigilance among policy-makers and environmental campaigners regarding the underlying intentions that accompany environmental management practices and shows that these can to some extent be diagnosed analytically.

The COVID‐19 pandemic threatens both lives and livelihoods. To reduce the spread of the virus, governments have introduced crisis management interventions that include border closures, quarantines, strict social distancing, marshalling of essential workers and enforced homeworking. COVID‐19 measures are necessary to save the lives of some of the most vulnerable people within society, and yet in parallel they create a range of negative everyday effects for already marginalized people. Likely unintended consequences of the management of the COVID‐19 crisis include elevated risk for workers in low‐paid, precarious and care‐based employment, over‐representation of minority ethnic groups in case numbers and fatalities, and gendered barriers to work. Drawing upon feminist ethics of care, I theorize a radical alternative to the normative assumptions of rationalist crisis management. Rationalist approaches to crisis management are typified by utilitarian logics, masculine and militaristic language, and the belief that crises follow linear processes of signal detection, preparation/prevention, containment, recovery and learning. By privileging the quantifiable — resources and measurable outcomes — such approaches tend to omit considerations of pre‐existing structural disadvantage. This article contributes a new theorization of crisis management that is grounded in feminist ethics to provide a care‐based concern for all crisis affected people.