ABSTRACT
Small businesses have suffered disproportionately from the COVID-19 pandemic. We use near-real-time weekly data from the Small Business Pulse Survey (April 26, 2020 - June 17, 2021) to examine the constantly changing impact of COVID-19 on small businesses across the United States. A set of multilevel models for change are adopted to model the trajectories of the various kinds of impact as perceived by business owners (subjective) and those recorded for business operations (objective), providing insights into regional resilience from a small business perspective. The findings reveal spatially uneven and varied trajectories in both the subjectively and the objectively assessed impact of COVID-19 across the U.S., and the different responses to the pandemic shock can be explained by evolving health situations and public policies, as well as by the economic structure and degree of socioeconomic vulnerability in different areas. This study contributes to scholarship on small businesses and regional resilience, as well as identifying policies and practices that build economic resilience and regional development under conditions of global pandemic disruption. [ FROM AUTHOR] Copyright of International Regional Science Review is the property of Sage Publications Inc. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full . (Copyright applies to all s.)
ABSTRACT
Given the current technological changes, entrepreneurs need to transform their businesses and become more and more digitalized. The process of digital transformation through digital marketing tool adoption is decisive for SMEs’ economic development. It may lead to an increase in revenues, may contribute to the transformation of business models, and may contribute to the increase in the sustainability of SMEs. Aspiring to understand what entrepreneurs think and perceive about their digital knowledge and tools to promote their business online, the authors performed a study to determine and quantify the perceived usefulness of digital tools used by SME owners, by using two different methods of research. They are represented by quantitative analysis and multi-criteria decision analysis, used to analyse the motivations, intentions, and characteristics of 333 entrepreneurs and the businesses they run. As a consequence, a matrix with 12 typologies of entrepreneurs was generated according to their behaviour towards digital marketing tools implemented for business. The obtained outcomes show the incremental potential interest of specialists and academia for SME entrepreneurs with intermediate digital knowledge. In this context, they might want to improve their skills to achieve entrepreneurial resilience with self-learning opportunities.
ABSTRACT
Entrepreneurship researchers have studied resilience across various contexts, including at the micro (that is, owner/business) and macro (that is, cluster/ecosystem/region) levels, by drawing from a myriad of academic disciplines. This Special Issue (SI) provides an opportunity to link resilience at the micro- and macro-level since collective small business owner resilience is foundational to macro-level resilience within clusters, ecosystems and regions. This point has become evident as businesses worldwide face similar challenges and economic adversities due to the lockdowns during the global COVID-19 pandemic. The collection of papers on small business resilience in this SI indicates the psychological, organizational, and economic responses undertaken by small businesses to overcome challenges faced, where they promoted their human, social, and financial capital while finding other responses less helpful. We hope the research and questions uncovered as a result of this SI provide continued food for thought and grounds for future research in small business resilience.