Crisis management as practice in small‐ and medium‐sized enterprises during the first period of COVID‐19

Abstract

This article draws attention to the social context and working methods in crisis management. Based on 1000 interviews with business leaders in Swedish small‐ and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs), we analyze crisis management in practice and ask: What social contexts do business leaders use in crisis management, and what working methods do they rely on? Most companies in this study do not have any form of crisis group; rather, they deal with issues reactively as they occur. Few of the companies work continuously with a crisis plan and only slightly more than half of those that have crisis plans report that it has been helpful in dealing with the COVID‐19 situation. The study concludes that Swedish SMEs seem reliant upon a process that has an emerging nature whereby decisions are largely based on gut feeling. However, the companies in our sample that experienced a significant revenue decline due to the COVID‐19 situation report that they employ a more centralized and deductive approach with reports and documents as a basis for their work. The study contributes to a developed understanding of how crisis management works in practice.

COVID-19 Pandemic and Research on the Mediating Role of Absorptive Capacity on the Relationship between Business Analytics Capability and Small-to-Medium-Sized Enterprise Performance

“…While crisis and threats to business can be commonplace, COVID-19 has brought a much higher level of crisis with a global impact and how long this could go on. Fasth, Elliot, and Styhre (2021) conducted a study of 1,000 SME business leaders in Sweden to understand their crisis management plans. These research findings indicated that many SMEs rarely had a crisis plan and were subject to large revenue losses.…”

The COVID-19 marathon: demands and resources of crises managers in continuous operation

“…Second, no central directory exists for all deployed COVID-19 CMTs and their characteristics (cf. Klinger et al, 2022), and CMTs were rarely set up in small and medium-sized enterprises (Fasth et al, 2022). Thus, it is difficult to estimate how representative our sample was for the whole population.…”

“…In response to the massive strain of COVID-19 for societies, initial descriptive analyses and qualitative interviews had been conducted with crisis management teams (CMTs; e.g., Fasth et al;Klinger et al, 2022;Thielsch et al, 2021), revealing quite specific demands, such as continuously high workload or personal affectedness (e.g., because friends and family might become infected), but also certain resources that were helpful for CMT members. However, such analyses mainly focus on the first months after the pandemic had started.…”

Independence, trust, and loyalty. The county governor's coordination of public and voluntary resources in crises in Norway

“…Learning to know each other this way appears to be an important mechanism, perhaps even more important than implementing fixed plans. Fasth et al (2021) It is a saying that the Norwegian county governor institution is a bold construction. It is thrilling to look into the history, with all its tensions and challenges, noting how this institution can balance different actors to establish a common understanding of a pandemic.…”