The COVID-19 Pandemic and Resilience of SME’s in Lithuania

Abstract

The article focuses on a relevant scientific and practical problem of the present, i.e., the resilience of organisations in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic. The aim is, upon analysing the response of organisations to the threats related to the COVID-19-caused restrictions on economic activity, to identify the predominant behaviour of organisations that predetermines their resilience. The theoretical part discusses the leadership aspect of the heads of organisations and the ability of organisations to survive in the conditions of uncertainty. The findings of the research in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) of Klaipėda Region are presented. The research methods chosen to deal with a scientific problem in the theoretical part include an analysis of literature sources, systematisation, synthesis, generalisation, and comparison. In the empirical research, quantitative research, i.e., a questionnaire survey and data processing methods, was applied. Due to the specificity of the region, the majority of the surveyed business entities (71.3%) are from the services sector, while the rest of the surveyed companies belong to the manufacturing (15%) and trade (13.7%) sectors. The research established that most of the organisations surveyed benefited from the government support. On assessing the survey data and summarising the response and efforts of organisations to deal with uncertainties, a conclusion was drawn that SMEs' response to uncertainties was mainly focused on the protection against threats and avoidance of risk, however, the organisations lacked preparedness and consistency when dealing with unforeseen circumstances.

The emerging of business resilience plans (BRPs) in dealing with business turbulence

“…In the context of small and medium-sized businesses, Pal et al (2014) describe organizational resilience as a firm’s ability to recover from a pre-existing situation following an external shock or crisis, and they are heavily reliant on the overall system's resilience in which they are integrated and embedded (Pal et al , 2014). Meanwhile, in the context of entrepreneurs, resilience refers to an organization's capacity to swiftly react to turbulence while continuing to operate normally and protect resources, people, assets and overall brand equity, according to a number of scholars (Branicki et al , 2018; Garikipati and Kambhampati, 2021; Herbane, 2019; Zuperkiene et al , 2021). Business resilience extends beyond disaster recovery by providing post-disaster solutions to prevent costly downtime, strengthen weaknesses and keep operations running (Nohrstedt et al , 2022; Ogra et al , 2021; Tariq et al , 2021).…”

Crisis and Resilient Response

“…There can be infinite reasons for it, both on the global level, e.g. war, global crises, global warming, pandemics (Išoraitė & Alperytė, 2023;Beshir, 2022;Somogyi & Nagy, 2022;Župerkienė et al, 2021;Bilczak, 2021;Buzzanca, Conigliani & Costantini, 2023 ) or on the personal level, e.g., illness, separation, death, loss of sense of security due to loss of job (Jankelová et al, 2021;Ighoshemu & Ogidiagba, 2022;Rak et al, 2022).…”

COVID-19 Pandemic and SMEs Performance Decline: The Mediating Role of Management Innovation and Organizational Resilience

“…Moreover, large-scale shutdown has delayed the delivery of upstream production companies. Compared to large enterprises, SMEs have shorter life, lack preparedness when dealing with unforeseen circumstances ( 37 ), lack sufficient cash flow and are more vulnerable to labor shortage, and are affected negatively by the COVID-19 ( 38 ), which will lead to FPD .…”