Resilience of Colombian Entrepreneurships during COVID-19 Pandemic Crisis

Oscar Leonardo Acevedo (), Manuel Méndez-Pinzón and Adela Margarita Vélez-Rolón
Additional contact information
Oscar Leonardo Acevedo: School of Basic Sciences, School of Business, Institución Universitaria Politécnico Grancolombiano, Calle 57 No. 3-00 Este, Bogotá 110231, Colombia
Manuel Méndez-Pinzón: School of Basic Sciences, School of Business, Institución Universitaria Politécnico Grancolombiano, Calle 57 No. 3-00 Este, Bogotá 110231, Colombia
Adela Margarita Vélez-Rolón: School of Business, Colegio de Estudios Superiores de Administración, Diagonal 35 No. 5A-57, Bogotá 110311, Colombia

Social Sciences, 2023, vol. 12, issue 3, 1-15

Abstract: MSMEs were facing major challenges driven by uncontrollable macro-environmental factors caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. This paper shows the strategies that a sample of Colombian start-ups developed for their survival in the first months of the COVID-19 crisis and the close relationship between these strategies and the aid policies deployed by the Colombian government. This study involved 220 Colombian enterprises from different sectors of the economy (agriculture, commerce, services, and industry) and different stages of the life cycle. Our statistical analysis was based on a deep survey of highly significant rank correlation, the qualitative association between variables, a structural equation model, and mediation analysis. Among our results, we highlight a high dependence on ICT technologies, varied access to economic aid, and strong dependence on negative crisis impacts with the need for aid and deep business changes. Concerning the last conclusion, we found a significant mediating effect of the adaptability of the start-ups in order to explain why older, bigger, and more necessary enterprises were the ones that obtained aid.

Keywords: resilience; SMEs; Latin American entrepreneurship; COVID-19 economic crisis (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A B N P Y80 Z00 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2076-0760/12/3/130/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2076-0760/12/3/130/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jscscx:v:12:y:2023:i:3:p:130-:d:1081617

Access Statistics for this article

Social Sciences is currently edited by Ms. Yvonne Chu

More articles in Social Sciences from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().