Can large-scale RDI funding stimulate post-crisis recovery growth? Evidence for Finland during COVID-19

Digitalization and entrepreneurial firms' resilience to pandemic crises: Evidence from COVID-19 and the German Mittelstand

“…That is, despite social distancing measures introduced during a pandemic, higher levels of digitalization seem to help such firms in retaining cross-cultural interaction including its benefits such as transfers of technology and knowledge and keeping up intercultural trade ( Nørfelt et al, 2020 ). As severe economic downturns are observed in most countries worldwide as a consequence of the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic (e.g., Fernandes, 2020 ; Mitze and Makkonen, 2022 ), our findings imply that the extent to which globalized and non-family entrepreneurial firms are affected by such crises can be reduced by higher levels of digitalization. However, they do not imply that digitalization protects globalized and non-family entrepreneurial firms from pandemic crises perfectly.…”

“… Giotopoulos et al, 2022 ), and industry- and economy-level factors such as regulation and funding for research, development, and innovation (cf. Mitze and Makkonen, 2022 ; Sharma et al, 2022 ). Relatedly, we cannot rule out that the driver of our significant findings on the moderating impact of family firm status on the digitalization–resilience relationship may be driven by family firms' underlying risk aversion.…”

“…The 20th century and early 21st century have seen an increasing number of crises due to diseases such as Spanish flu, AIDS, SARS, Avian flu, and – most recently – the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) ( Kraus et al, 2020 ). These diseases have impacted thousands or even millions of individuals, and have had serious short- and long-term consequences for the economy as a whole and for individual businesses ( Donthu and Gustafsson, 2020 ; García-Carbonell et al, 2021 ; Mitze and Makkonen, 2022 ). Since it cannot be ruled out that additional pandemic crises will further affect businesses, it seems relevant to investigate what makes businesses more resilient against such crises.…”

Resilience of rural businesses in times of crisis: Firm survival during the COVID-19 pandemic in Finland

“…To empirically answer these research questions, this study utilised comprehensive data collected for Finland, which was chosen as a suitable case study context due to the rapid deployment of its extensive business support funding schemes (Mitze and Makkonen, 2023). Moreover, the availability of timely and geographically fine-grained data in Finland facilitates the analysis of a (still) very recent crisis.…”

“…Despite the growing body of literature on the impacts of COVID-19 on businesses, little is known about the geography of firm survival during the pandemic in terms of potential rural–urban differences as well as the potentially geographically varying impacts of business support funding. Since entrepreneurship plays a key role in maintaining and developing communities in rural areas (Newbery et al, 2017), there is a significant research gap in our understanding of the resilience of rural businesses, and more widely, rural economies, which this study aimed to tackle with the following research questions: Did the COVID-19 pandemic significantly affect business closure rates and did these rates differ across geographical contexts, that is, in rural versus urban areas? To what extent did business support funding mitigate the economic consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic for businesses, and did these effects vary across business support instruments and geographical contexts, that is, in rural versus urban areas? To empirically answer these research questions, this study utilised comprehensive data collected for Finland, which was chosen as a suitable case study context due to the rapid deployment of its extensive business support funding schemes (Mitze and Makkonen, 2023). Moreover, the availability of timely and geographically fine-grained data in Finland facilitates the analysis of a (still) very recent crisis.…”