Research pick: SME crisis management - "Pandemic threats: how SMEs can respond to the challenges from global crises"

Very few businesses have not been affected detrimentally by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Research in the International Journal of Globalisation and Small Business, looks at how small to medium-size enterprises (SMEs) might respond to such a crisis and rise to the challenges it brings.

Ratan J.S. Dheer of the Department of Management at Eastern Michigan University, in Ypsilanti, USA, and Aidin Salamzadeh of the Faculty of Management at the University of Tehran, Iran, explain how we have seen the laying off employees, supply disruption, financial uncertainties, and company closures across SMEs in the wake of the pandemic. However, the picture of the impact of the crisis on SMEs remains incomplete. As such, we do not yet have a clear understanding of the full impact of the disease on this sector of the commercial world. Without a complete picture, we cannot hope to address the ongoing problems holistically nor find ways to cope when the next such crisis arises, as it inevitably will.

In their research paper, the team discuss key measures that might be implemented to mitigate the negative effects on SMEs. They discuss the advantages and the limitations of those measures and ultimately offer not a complicated nor extensive framework but a simple roadmap by which smaller companies might navigate their route through a future crisis and the external shocks it brings.

The team explains that there are two important measures that might be put in place before a crisis occurs. The first is to accept organisational vulnerability, forewarned is forearmed. Secondly SMEs should be proactive in scanning the environment, ever watchful of indicators of a coming crisis.

Once a crisis has hit, then mitigation measures are needed. First, SMEs must evaluate the scope of the crisis and how they might cope, if they can. Secondly, SMEs must renew their focus on innovation in order to take advantage of opportunities that arise in the wake of the crisis. SMEs must also keep communications channels open with their stakeholders and at the same time display resilience and empathy as appropriate.

In the post-crisis world, SMEs must engage in learning while recovering from the crisis. It is perhaps a cliché but lessons must be learned if an SME is to move forward in the post-crisis world and be ready for a future crisis. The team also offers advice for policymakers that might be heeded if they are to help the SMEs cope, especially in the post-crisis stage.

SMEs must also prepare and learn to help themselves. Nevertheless, there remains a need to support SMEs so that society and the economy might emerge into the post-crisis world in a better position than might be seen if no measures were taken. “Now is the time for scholars and policymakers to act,” the team asserts. They suggest that the agenda they have set in their paper could stimulate further research into crisis management.

Dheer, R.J.S. and Salamzadeh, A. (2022) ‘Pandemic threats: how SMEs can respond to the challenges from global crises’, Int. J. Globalisation and Small Business, Vol. 13, No. 1, pp.1–17.