Bouncing Back from Extreme Weather Events: Some Preliminary Findings on Resilience Barriers Facing Small and Medium‐Sized Enterprises

Abstract

Extreme weather events (EWEs) pose unprecedented threats to modern societies and represent a much‐debated issue strongly interlinked with current development policies. Small and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs), which constitute a driving force of economic growth, employment and total value added, remain highly vulnerable to and ill prepared for such environmental perturbations. This study investigates barriers to SMEs’ resilience to EWEs in an attempt to shed light on enabling factors that can define effective organizational responses to non‐linear environmental stimuli. Relying on structural equation modeling and data gathered from 109 SMEs that recently experienced EWE impacts, we link the general concept of SMEs’ resilience barriers to EWEs with a series of elements to determine specific internal and external factors that contribute the most to EWE resilience. In particular, external barriers of institutional conditions and mechanisms of support and guidance as well as internal barriers of resources and managerial perceptions are found to be the most critical ones in determining resilience. The assessment offers essential research evidence for practitioners on SME management and sets forth linkages with current mechanisms for policy interventions towards an appropriate resilience agenda for SMEs. Copyright © 2018 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment

Business adaptation to climate change: American ski resorts and warmer temperatures

“…These adverse conditions may involve chronic stress from gradual and persistent changes in biophysical conditions (e.g., ocean rising and decreasing rain levels), or they may be the result of extreme and sudden disruptions such as natural disasters (Linnenluecke et al, ; Weinhofer & Busch, ). The strategy and management literatures have extensively examined the impact of natural disasters on businesses because of their large potential human and financial loses (Halkos et al, ; Linnenluecke et al, ; Oetzel & Oh, ). Yet, strategy scholars have paid much less attention to how chronic slow‐onset nature adversity stressors affect business adaptation efforts.…”

“…Developing such advanced strategic resilience capabilities involves complex and cascading change processes and breakthrough innovations that are more transformative and more difficult to develop and implement (DesJardine et al, ; Gasbarro et al, ; Halkos et al, ; Tisch & Galbreath, ). The risk of failure for transformative change is greater because it tends to challenge organizational identity, routines, and well‐established relationships engendering renewed internal inertial forces (DesJardine et al, ; Gavetti, ; Hannan & Freeman, ; Repenning & Sterman, ).…”

“…Growing nature adversity intensity may pose an important strategic problem as increasing evidence suggests adaptation limits for firms facing severe adverse conditions in their natural environment (Halkos, Skouloudis, Malesios, & Evangelinos, 2018;Winn et al, 2011). For example, businesses appear to be increasingly impacted by unfavorable conditions linked to global climate change such as higher temperatures, greater variations in the amount and timing of rainfall and snowfall, sea level rise, and more frequent and intense weatherrelated disasters (IPCC, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), 2014 ;Weinhofer & Busch, 2013;Linnenluecke et al, 2012).…”

Managing supply chain resilience to pursue business and environmental strategies

“…Growing globalization and outsourcing have resulted in supply chains (SCs) that have become larger, more complex, and therefore more vulnerable to disruptions (Börjeson & Boström, ; Cardoso, Barbosa‐Povoa, Relvas, & Novais, ; Chen, Hsieh, & Wee, ; Gómez‐Bolaños, Hurtado‐Torres, & Delgado‐Márquez, ; Wijethilake & Lama, ; Yang, Gao, Xu, & Guo, ). The nature of disruptions are manifold but can roughly be divided into two categories: (a) climatic disasters (e.g., heat waves, hurricanes, floodings, earthquakes, and droughts; Halkos, Skouloudis, Malesios, & Evangelinos, ; Linnebluecke, Griffiths, & Winn, ) and (b) anthropogenic catastrophes (e.g., economic recessions, political turmoils, port stoppages, losses of critical suppliers, quality issues, equipment failures, poor communications, and human errors) (Jabbarzadeh, Fahimnia, Sheu, & Moghadam, ). These disruptions increasingly impact organizations, industries, and entire economies (Halkos et al, ; Linnebluecke et al, ) and require companies to design resilient business models to tackle managerial and environmental disruptions (Carmeli, Dothan, & Boojihawon, ; Tisch & Galbreath, ; Yang et al, ).…”

“…The literature has grown tremendously upon these themes, but research findings are also fragmented and scattered across the literature (Blackhurst et al, ; Jüttner & Maklan, ). In addition, the literature remains anchored in a positivist equilibrium‐focused meaning of resilience (Wieland & Wallenburg, ), which holds that resilience is about an organism's ability to “bounce back” (Halkos et al, ) or, in other words, the capacity to get back to an initial state of equilibrium (Holling, ). Yet, studies (e.g., Davoudi, ; Evans, ) proposed an alternative perspective of resilience that is rooted in a non‐positivist perspective and which draws on Holling's () idea of ecological resilience, or the ability to “bounce forth”, which is an organism's ability to persist and adapt.…”