COVID-19 pandemic has brought significant and multiple challenges for SMEs. While SMEs have traditionally faced financial and non-financial crises, the pandemic has brought about additional uncertainties on how to maintain business continuity. The purpose of this paper is to examine how SMEs can mitigate against COVID-19-related crisis by examining the impacts that the pandemic has had on them through a review of 34 articles. The thematic analysis from the literature covered three overarching and inter-related challenges including (i) cost and finance-related challenges, (ii) disruption of activities, and (iii) existential difficulties. The paper’s value lies in addressing the gap between the espoused literature’s claim of the beneficial impact of new technological advancements and SMEs’ ability to survive in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. The additional value of this paper is a framework of recommendations to help enhance SMEs’ resilience and responsiveness in the context of COVID-19. These recommendations include collaboration, openness, taking advantage of opportunities/victory, and durability.
This manifesto presents 10 recommendations for a sustainable future for the field of Work and Organizational Psychology. The manifesto is the result of an emerging movement around the Future of WOP (see www. futureofwop.com), which aims to bring together WOP-scholars committed to actively contribute to building a better future for our field. Our recommendations are intended to support both individuals and collectives to become actively engaged in co-creating the future of WOP together with us. Therefore, this manifesto is open and never "finished." It should continuously evolve, based on an ongoing debate around our professional values and behavior. This manifesto is meant, first of all, for ourselves as an academic community. Furthermore, it is also important for managers, decision makers, and other stakeholders and interested parties, such as students, governments and organizations, as we envision what the future of WOP could look like, and it is only through our collective efforts that we will be able to realize a sustainable future for all of us.
Although the importance of people and institutions has been highlighted in multinational enterprise studies, the association between people, institutions, and the internationalization of small to medium-sized enterprise (SMEs) is an underexplored issue from the context of a small developing country. We examine theories subsumed under the Universal Model of human resource management (HRM) onto SMEs to study the hypothesized people and institutionally orientated barriers posed to SMEs' internationalization. Using quantitative analysis, the impacts of the barriers on internationalization are highlighted with particular attention to employer attractiveness. Following extant literature review, this study has used primary data collected through questionnaires from 212 Bangladeshi SMEs. We developed and validated the partial least square-based structural equation model (PLS-SEM) to assess the impacts and successfully framed people versus institutional barriers as a second-order hierarchical reflective model, which has not been done previously. Given their marginal significance over institutions, people-oriented cultural barriers should be included as an extension of the Universal Model to study SME internationalization.
Purpose People-related factors are very significant barriers for the internationalisation of large and small firms. Although the literature has identified a number of steps that SMEs need to take to increase their resilience in international markets, a study that identifies both the resilience and non-resilience barriers for SME internationalisation has not been undertaken in the scientific fields Human Resource Management and International Business. This paper aims to examine resilience and non-resilience barriers faced by SMEs in a developing country. In addition to the resilience literature, they examine non-resilience and combine its characteristics with resilience barriers from the Bangladeshi context. Design/methodology/approach Quantitative data analysis technique is used in this study to identify the impacts of these resilience/non-resilience issues’ internationalisation of SMEs both from micro and macro levels. This study has used primary data collected through the questionnaires from 212 Bangladeshi SMEs. Based on the data, this study has developed and validated partial least square-based structural equation model to assess the impacts of resilience factors on the internationalisation of SMEs with particular attention to entrepreneurial attractiveness. Findings It has successfully framed resilience vs non-resilience barriers of the internationalisation of SMEs as a second-order hierarchical reflective model and found that internationalisation of SMEs is significantly influenced by the resilience factors where language and related socio-cultural issues are marginally more significant. Research limitations/implications A couple of limitations include the following. First, concentrating on resilience and non-resilience serves as a limitation as the authors could have had resilience vs other categories such political, economic, legal and technological barriers. Second, they have mainly used cross-sectional data by using the survey method. This study could have been better served had they also tried to combine the use of qualitative analysis as attempted elsewhere. Practical implications Practically, this study researched in an area which was neglected and under-reported by existing studies. Its exploration showed that it has potential to contribute significantly to the policymakers and implementers, as it comprises SMEs and emerging countries. It has been noted in the literature that these economies and firms are less capable to conduct research independently, as they are resource-constrained. Social implications The results reveal that both resilience- and non-resilience-related barriers are significant to SMEs internationalisation. However, if policymakers were to give priority to any one of these, they should give marginally more priority to resilience-type barriers compared to the non-resilience barriers to internationalisation. Originality/value To date, studies on resilience have concentrated on identifying challenges faced by firms and what types of behaviours are required by individual members so as to enhance survival. However, there are no studies so far on identifying or even modelling both resilience and non-resilience barriers within the context of SMEs internationalisation in developing countries. This study combines resilience and non-resilience factors in a model to find out their contribution especially in the under explored area of non-resilience from a Bangladeshi contextual perspective that seeks to encourage international entrepreneurship.
The way this study has used the "best-fit" approach has facilitated the investigation of how three hypothesized constructs of political, economic, and social barriers can deepen our knowledge of their impacts on small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs)' internationalization within a small developing country context. Based on a quantitative analysis of the three hypothesized barriers, we used the "best-fit" approach to measure the extent to which the SMEs' internal variables like people, products, services, and practices might best fit some of the people and non-people factors external to the businesses. The application of the "best-fit" approach onto the three hypotheses-politics (H1), social (H2), economics (H3), helped us in explaining the major social and politico-economic barriers faced by a developing economy' (Bangladeshi) SMEs' internationalization despite previous literatures' emphasis on the impacts of globalization, market drivers or their oversight. Based on the findings, we point to future research trajectory. This study used primary survey data from 212 Bangladeshi SMEs and successfully validated an HR model by using Smart PLS3 software. The results from the hypotheses were used to produce the HR model to help SMEs identify the significance of people and economic factors and propose these aspects for inclusion in the "best-fit" approach, SME, and globalization research. K E Y W O R D Sbest-fit approach, developing country, HR model, internationalization, SMEs
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