How Small-to-Medium Enterprises Thrive and Survive in Turbulent Times

Book excerpt: Political and financial upheaval is not a new phenomenon – from the tulip bulb bubble in the Netherlands in the seventeenth century to Black Monday in 1987, businesses throughout history have worked to adapt and cope. However, today’s climate is even more fraught with crises, raising the levels of concern for business, society, and governments. It especially poses a challenge for small businesses, who have to learn to cope with this increasingly turbulent environment, dealing with the difficulties and taking advantage of the new opportunities that turbulence can provide. Understanding how resilience capabilities can be developed to promote sustainable business is imperative. This book provides a new paradigm for conceptualizing resilience capabilities and advances current understanding both theoretically and practically in real-world business settings. Examining the processes of resilience during different phases of crisis reveals why businesses either fail, or outperform their counterparts during times of turbulence. Based on in-depth empirical research, researchers and advanced students in small business, strategic management and risk management will find this an invaluable guide to organizational resilience.