Building Business Resilience-A Research study across Impact SME Sectors of the Indian Economy

Resilience of an organization is increasingly being perceived as the key factor that enables businesses to bounce back from the inevitable ‘curved-balls’ posed by big challenges such as economic, environmental, digital, societal and health disruptions (as with recent pandemic) as also from the explosive advent & growth of new technologies, spiralling progress of, as yet, un-regulated AI developments, regulatory changes, geopolitical shocks and protectionism, and industry re-organization (including de-verticalization & dis-intermediation), sudden and rapid shifts in consumer preferences and behavior & many new categories un-expected competitors.

The research focuses on how Organizations build Resilience. The study will follow the classic definition in the literature and define organizational resilience as a dynamic capability and ‘ability to effectively absorb, develop situation-specific responses to and ultimately engage in transformative activities to capitalize on disruptive surprises that potentially threaten organization survival’ (Lengnick-Hall et al., 2011). The study adopts the theory-in-use approach and undertakes a series of qualitative interviews of senior management across industry sectors varyingly impacted by the current and prior disruptions. The objective being to study the managers’ approach to Product-Market strategies and associated Organizational strategies (a) before disruption (b) during disruption and (c) immediate aftermath of disruption and their absorptive (demonstrating redundancy, robustness, agility) and adaptive paths taken (demonstrating resourcefulness, adaptability, flexibility) as theorized in the evolving literature so far, to understand HOW resilience is being built, particularly so in the more critical and vulnerable SME sectors. The study has analysed both defensive-sector industries as in IT, Healthcare/Pharma as also those more severely impacted as in Financial Services, Manufacturing, Energy, and others comparing strategies adopted by big and small firms impacted by differing disruptions, varying by severity levels, both internal and external, with varying degrees of predictability.

Key propositions have thus been developed as antecedents to strengthening and gaining business resilience in the key Product/Market area of organizational strategy and functioning.

In an increasingly VUCA world, this study aims to add to the body of knowledge to build more resilient and sustainable business over the long term and provide analysts, investors, practicing managers & business leaders and academicians an additional toolkit to evaluate businesses over and above the conventional lagging indicators of standard financial metrics.