On entrepreneurial resilience among micro‐entrepreneurs in the face of economic disruptions… A little help from friends

Abstract

While much has been written about resilience in the supply chain management (SCM) literature, most investigations focus on large corporations from the perspective of helping them bounce back after disruptions. There has been little investigation on resilience among the weakest and smallest members of the global supply chain-that is, small entrepreneurs at the bottom of the pyramid (BOP). This is despite the fact that these micro-entrepreneurs are often key cogs in the last-mile supply chain efforts of major multinational corporations. They experience disruptions at a higher rate than major corporations, have fewer formal mechanisms in place to recover from them, and are often unable to "bounce back" in the traditional sense. In the current study, we address this gap by investigating multiple types of disruptions (i.e., idiosyncratic and covariate) and how they impact entrepreneurial resilience among microbusinesses in an emerging economy.In addition, we look at the buffering impact of various actors (i.e., financial and social) on entrepreneurship in the face of these disruptions. We highlight the important role that these entrepreneurs play in the BOP supply chain and provide suggestions that can assist with improving their resilience and the resilience of the BOP supply chain.

Two perspectives on supply chain resilience

“…Finally, Iyengar et al (2021) investigate the resilience of small entrepreneurs at the bottom of the pyramid. Scholars tend to research large corporations, all too often forgetting about specific socio-economic groups and their entrepreneurial contributions to our global economy, such as small shippers facilitating last-mile distributions.…”

New perspectives on supply chain resilience

“…The Iyengar et al (2021) paper in this issue also underscores the importance of understanding how disruptions impact the resilience of different entities in the supply chain. By providing a bottom of the pyramid (BOP) perspective in the examinination of entrepreneurial resilience in their paper titled, "On Entrepreneurial Resilience Among Micro-Entrepreneurs in the Face of Economic Disruptions… A Little Help from Friends," they highlight how entrepreneurs in BOP markets experience disruptions at a much higher rate than major corporations and have fewer formal mechanisms in place for to recovery.…”

“…The scale issue emphasized by Novak et al (2021) also relates to the unit of analysis in conceptualizing resilience. Even when referring to supply chain resilience as the ability of the firm to adapt or reconfigure the structure of the supply chain in light of a disruption (Ambulkar et al 2015; Dolgui et al, 2018; Iyengar et al, 2021; Pettit et al, 2019; Wiedmer et al, 2021), resilience is a firm‐level phenomenon. But if we take, for example, an automanufacturer producing ventilators during the pandemic (Wieland & Durach, 2021), how could this have impacted the resilience of the manufacturer's upstream suppliers and downstream customers (i.e., dealers)?…”

Logistics for a better world

“…We find it encouraging that over the last several years, JBL has both called for and consistently published research demonstrating these efforts. For instance, scholars have designed studies to understand the unique challenges social enterprises and microentrepreneurs face at the base of the pyramid markets (Bals & Tate, 2018; Iyengar et al, 2021; Pal & Altay, 2019). There has been encouraging work on sustainable supply chain management related to procurement decisions (Mukandwal et al, 2020), implementation challenges (Nath et al, 2021), the impact of digitization (Sanders et al, 2019), macrolevel factors like country risk (Reinerth et al, 2019), new concept development like supply chain integrity (Castillo et al, 2018), and opportunities for future research (Carter & Washispack, 2018).…”