Resilience in a time of contagion: Lessons from small businesses during the COVID-19 pandemic

The prolificacy of green transformational leadership in shaping employee green behavior during times of crises in small and medium enterprises: a moderated mediation model

Besides various other potent efforts to contain and consolidate, post-pandemic crisis management requires an adequate display of green transformational leadership. Green transformational leaders exhibit a formidable commitment to sustainability in making managerial choices and subsequently inspiring and motivating their employees to participate vigorously in the ensuing green initiatives. Such initiatives could profoundly help organizations adjust to shifting market situations, follow requirements, and preserve stakeholder trust. While making appeals to the central tenants of the transformation leadership theory, social exchange theory, and the social cognition theory, the study examines the impact of green transformational leadership on employees' green behaviors during times of crises using employees' self-esteem as a mediator and work engagement as the critical moderator. The relevant context of the study has been the small and medium enterprises of Saudi Arabia. Data from 232 SMEs employing less than 250 employees selected through convenience sampling was collected using structured questionnaires. After performing hierarchical regression modeling using SPSS 23, macro V4 model 58, and Amos 24, it has been found that green transformational leadership is positively associated with employees' green behaviors, with self-esteem and work engagement acting as significant mediating and moderating conditions, respectively. Besides, providing firsthand empirical evidence on the impact of green transformational leadership on employees' green behaviors, in unique industrial (SMEs), contextual (times of crises), and regional (Middle Eastern) settings, the study offers useful implications to the managers aspiring to enhance the sustainable performance of their firms through maturing green behaviors among their employees.

Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in a pandemic: A systematic review of pandemic risk impacts, coping strategies and resilience

Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) are particularly vulnerable to pandemics. Therefore, resilience and adaptation to shocks from pandemics such as COVID-19 are urgently needed. However, despite some coping strategies already in place among SMEs, research on their nature and effectiveness is limited. Thus, it remains unclear how effectively and sustainably documented coping strategies reduce SMEs' vulnerability and increase their resilience to pandemic risk. This article reviews academic literature for evidence of pandemic risk impacts on SMEs, coping strategies in response to these impacts, and the degree to which these strategies reduce SMEs' vulnerability and increase their resilience. According to the literature review, seven essential pandemic risk impacts were identified for SMEs - human movement restrictions, financial constraints, operational challenges, logistics difficulties, delayed business reopening, short-term policy focus and tacit knowledge workers. The study also outlined eleven critical coping strategies, notably structural or physical and behavioural changes. Study analysis reveals that resilience research among SMEs is predominantly conceptual with limited empirical evidence. To conclude, this study urges more adaptation research focused on developing new forms of pandemic risk education for SMEs addressing their complexities.

Crisis leadership in COVID-19: A qualitative study of Norwegian business leaders

Background

On March 11, 2020, the World Health Organization declared the novel coronavirus outbreak a global pandemic. The crisis that follows presented significant adverse challenges for organizations and business leaders around the world. The present study aims to explore how the extreme context of the COVID-19 influenced crisis leadership, with emphasis on coping and adaptive approaches, in Norwegian leaders during the early stage of the pandemic.

Materials and methods

A group of 11 Norwegian business leaders from different private sector companies were subject to an in depth, semi structured interview after the first 9 months of COVID-19. A sensemaking perspective and the Cognitive Activation Theory of Stress (CATS) were used to interpret the results.

Results

The pandemic called for crisis leadership and a rapid adaptation to a radically changed situation. Restructuring of organizational processes and introduction of new routines were followed by support and caring for their employees during the first wave of the pandemic. All the leaders coped well with the situation, and some were excited over the opportunity to make a difference in this demanding and stressful situation. Many emphasized that the pandemic was an external threat, resulting in an acceptance of the situation, more transparency, collaboration, and generosity within the organization. Especially the willingness to change was challenged in a positive way. A more blurred line between office and home, and absence of social activities were mentioned as negative outcomes.

Individual-based and interactional resilience mechanisms in social and healthcare service NPOs during the COVID-19 pandemic: Handling a disruptive extreme context in Austria

While Austrian social and healthcare service nonprofit organizations (NPOs) are key performers in the COVID-19 pandemic, we also notice their vulnerability in terms of struggling with this disruptive extreme context. The particularity of disruptive extreme contexts is that organizations commonly can neither anticipate them, nor prepare specific countermeasures or specialized resources for fighting against them. Thus, we regard organizational resilience based on non-specialized resources as an appropriate approach for dealing with (the struggles of) disruptive extreme contexts. Organizational resilience refers to an organization's ability to resist disruptive extreme contexts while maintaining and adapting functionality and ultimately learning from these extreme contexts by mobilizing and accessing the required resources, behaviors and capabilities. Based on 33 expert interviews with NPO top and middle managers we aim to explore individual-based and interactional resilience mechanisms of NPOs in the pandemic. The qualitative content analysis yielded to following results: Individual personality traits (e.g., pragmatisms, flexibility) and attitudes (serenity and optimism) constitute individual-based resilience mechanisms. Moreover, a shared (crisis) understanding (e.g., common sense of direction), social connectedness (e.g., team cohesion) and managerial staff orientation (e.g., a caring attitude) as interactional resilience mechanisms helped to maintain and adapt NPOs' functioning. Overall, this study reinforces the multilevel nature of resilience in terms of the crucial combination of individual and interactional resilience mechanisms for facing adversity. Moreover, it emphasizes the evolving nature of resilience in terms of the required time for, e.g., building trust.

Coping with COVID-19 - Which Resilience Mechanisms Enabled Austrian Nonprofit Organizations to Weather the Pandemic Storm?

The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic triggered a global crisis affecting the work and partially the existence of businesses, governments, administrations and nonprofit organizations (NPOs). The latter not only faced severe challenges themselves, but also play(ed) a major role in fighting the pandemic, especially those offering services in social and health care. Maintaining service delivery under pandemic conditions to serve the often vital needs of clients requires (organizational) resilience. This concept generally relates to the ability to withstand adversity, to adapt in a turbulent environment and respond to (disruptive) change. Based on a qualitative content analysis of 33 interviews with nonprofit executives, this paper explores the impact of the pandemic on Austrian NPOs active in health and social care in terms of contextual challenges faced. Our study contributes to (nonprofit) resilience research and extreme context research literature as it illustrates how NPOs coped with this disruptive extreme context. Our findings show which resilience mechanisms (i.e. all kinds of resilient behavior, resources and capabilities) were helpful in overcoming pandemic challenges and getting through these hard times.

Coping with COVID-19: The Resilience and Transformation of Community-Based Tourism in Brunei Darussalam

The COVID-19 pandemic heavily impacted the travel and tourism industry, economies, livelihoods, public services, and opportunities globally. This is also observed in the small country of Brunei. As one of the few countries that have successfully mitigated COVID-19 transmissions, Brunei is slowly rebuilding its tourism industry through its community-based tourism (CBT). Following Sharma et al.’s resilience-based framework for reviving the tourism industry post-COVID-19 established in 2021, this study incorporates responses from semi-structured interviews with 16 local CBT owners on the challenges, the management, and the CBT initiatives during the height of the pandemic until today. These initiatives include diversifying more tour packages and utilising local resources and products. Despite the lockdown imposed by the government, which suspended businesses and restricted all travelling, local CBT operations flourished, generated more income for the owners, and created job opportunities for the community. Such efforts have caused the public to appreciate local cultures, the environment, and ultimately increase CBT experiences in the country. While shedding light on Brunei’s unique management of its tourism industry during the pandemic, this paper also demonstrates theoretical and conceptual contributions to the recent literature of resilient and transformational tourism and provide suggestions on how to manage CBT operations during these challenging times.