Bibliometric systematic literature review on SMEs resilience literature

Abstract

Research on the resilience of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) has significantly increased since the COVID-19 pandemic. On the other hand, building resilience is essential not only during crises but also in the current highly competitive business environment. Therefore, a comprehensive understanding is needed to provide strategic knowledge in generating SMEs’ resilience. This study aims to develop knowledge maps related to SMEs’ resilience based on published articles in the Scopus database through bibliometric analysis and systematic literature review. We reproduce the thematic map into a structured framework of the strategy to generate business resilience in the SME context. Our findings show that the Resource-Based View (RBV) and dynamic capabilities are the primary theoretical frameworks adopted in research on SMEs’ resilience. Additionally, we found that the entrepreneurial resilience of owner-managers is crucial for driving the organizational resilience of SMEs. Furthermore, the dynamic business environment due to crises, natural disasters, competition, and technology disruption is identified as an external factor that stimulates resilience responses in SMEs. The findings and discussion section presents a detailed discussion regarding the findings of the bibliometric-systematic literature review and the proposed framework. We also outline future research agendas that will be useful for future researchers and SME scholars.