Scenario Planning for a Post-Pandemic Era in Small Businesses: A Dynamic Capability Perspective

Abstract

The COVID-19 crisis has fundamentally transformed the way we live our lives and how organizations work. The business sector needed to understand what is the better approach to continue their activity, this leads to formulating and forecasting different scenarios associated with the impact of the pandemic on its suppliers, customers, and employees. This paper aims to investigate possible scenarios in small businesses in a post- pandemic era and how small businesses are preparing for the return of their activity maintenance. In addition, a theoretical contribution throughout dynamic capabilities perspective. An exploratory study with in-depth inquiries based on a quantitative methodology with small business owners as a sample identifying possible scenarios and what is the future direction of small businesses. Also, a bibliometric analysis was applied and focused on scenario planning, strategy, post-pandemic, and dynamic capabilities. Indexed journals were used to validate the study and VOSviewer software to perform a keyword analysis on co-occurrence and counting. A scenario planning framework for small businesses gives an understanding of what could be the possible outlines for the organization and acquire a better comprehension of what strategies can be used as a supplement to surpass the recent crisis. For last, the conceptualization of the theme relates to dynamic capabilities, scenarios, and the behaviour of small businesses.