OpinionIntroduction
To talk about business resilience in COVID 19 times, it is first necessary to differentiate the stages of the pandemic up to the present time. We can consider that there are 3 stages:
a) Stage of normality.
b) Initial stage of the virus.
c) Imposition of restrictions stage.
d) Stage of the lifting of restrictions (even if it is, in some
cases, a partial lifting).
On the other hand, Resilience, in ordinary language, is a verb
that comes from the Latin resilio, resilire, which means to jump
back, to bounce back [1,2] note that resilience was first proposed
in research in the field of ecology [3] and distinguished into (i) a
system (ecosystem, society, or organization) persisting in a state of
equilibrium (stability) and (ii) how dynamic systems behave when
stressed and moved from this equilibrium. These authors propose
the use of the term resilience as applied to the business domain
to describe that the overall objective of a system is to continue to
function as well as possible in the face of a disruptive situation to
achieve its purpose, with resilience being a function of both the
vulnerability of the system and its adaptive capacity. The moment
a disruptive event occurs, an organization is pushed from a state of
relative equilibrium to a state characterized by instability.
The ease with which the organization is moved to this new
unstable state is a measure of the organization’s vulnerability,
while the degree to which the organization copes with the change
is a measure of its adaptive capacity [4]. states that resilient
companies are those that can absorb internal and external changes
and disruptions without affecting their profitability and that even
develop such flexibility that, through rapid adaptation processes,
they manage to obtain extra benefits, whether pecuniary or
intangible, derived from adverse and/or unforeseen circumstances.
[5] define it as the capacity of organizations to reduce vulnerability,
the ability to change and adapt, as well as the ability to recover
quickly from unforeseen events. [6] considers resilience as an
adaptive capacity of the firm. He describes it as its ability to deal
with, adapt to and recover from a shock.
Resilience shows how well a firm can decrease its level of
vulnerability to both expected and unexpected risks; how flexible it
is in reorganizing itself despite the changing environment; and how
effective it can be in recovering in the shortest possible time and at
the lowest possible cost. At a global level, we can observe that some
countries are more resilient than others according to the Global
Resilience Index, in which we can see that Norway, Switzerland
and Ireland are the most resilient countries, always focusing on the
country’s capacity to recover (adaptive capacity) in a crisis such as
the one generated by COVID 19. The Global Resilience Index FM is
an equally weighted composite measure of three basic resilience
factors: economic, quality of risk and the supply chain itself, which
are the ones considered to make the assessment [7]. Focusing on
companies according to their size, companies that have global
businesses will be those that manage resilience best.
Moreover, resilience in SMEs will depend precisely on the
type of customers they have (local or global), their capacity to adapt, the support they receive from government funds and the
threshold of employee ownership. In the studies of [8]. we found
that there is a tipping point for SMEs beyond which they can no
longer manage resilience. Therefore, in this sense, ‘we can say that
the most resilient SMEs are those that have global customers and
have been able to generate a greater sense of employee ownership
of the company’ [9]. Predicting long-term business recovery
from disaster: a comparison of the Loma Prieta earthquake and
Hurricane Andrew as well as being more dependent on state aid
funds. Furthermore, focusing on specific sectors, we find that,
globally, the most resilient sectors are public administration,
finance and insurance, telecommunications, energy, professional
services, retail, manufacturing, science, advertising, and leisure and
travel.
(2020 Global Workforce Resilience Report, Adapting your employee experience strategy amidst disruption, Qualtrics). The resilience of these sectors is - not surprisingly - marked by their degree of exposure to the impact of COVID 19. On the other hand, we can see that COVID 19 has had four key moments at the business level, which are the ones we mentioned at the beginning and whose resilience management should be different. Resilience focuses on these aspects: employee health and wellbeing, customer and brand demand and protection, supply chain and global trade, risk management, information technology and, security, legal obligations, people management, governance and social responsibility, financial and investor management. And for employees, the variables measured were job satisfaction, intentions to leave, work intensification, evaluation of work tasks at the time of the pandemic, engagement, cognitive irritation, and affective irritation.
Methodology
This study employs a literature review to examine whether companies have been resilient and what makes them more resilient. Also, business-scientific studies on resilience and coronavirus have been reviewed. A search was conducted using the words “resilience” and “coronavirus” and “SMEs” as the field of study. We have identified business-scientific studies and keywords of the study in scientific articles and once the keywords have been identified and the studies have been reviewed, our search will be a search for articles and studies, selection of these, extraction of data related to:
a) Most resilient countries.
b) Factors that make SMEs more resilient or not.
c) Most resilient sectors.
d) Employee reactions to non-resilient actions.
e) Where SMEs should go to become more resilient (areas
and actions).
And then an Analysis of these
We expect to find in this research that good resilience management leads to employees having on the one hand, better sleep quality, greater relaxation, and a greater sense of agility, also leading to a reduction in self-criticism, hypervigilance and, laziness and there are several aspects that need to be emphasized more: employees, customers, liquidity, suppliers, communications and transparency and scenario planning.
References
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