The COVID-19 Pandemic and Resilience of SME’s in Lithuania

Erika Župerkienė (), Ligita Šimanskienė (), Daiva Labanauskaitė (), Julija Melnikova () and Vida Davidavičienė ()
Additional contact information
Erika Župerkienė: Klaipėda University, Lithuania
Ligita Šimanskienė: Klaipėda University, Lithuania
Daiva Labanauskaitė: Klaipėda University, Lithuania
Julija Melnikova: Klaipėda University, Lithuania
Vida Davidavičienė: Vilnius Gediminas Technical University (VILNIUS TECH), Lithuania

Entrepreneurship and Sustainability Issues, 2021, vol. 8, issue 3, 53-65

Abstract: The article focuses on a relevant scientific and practical problem of the present, i.e., the resilience of organisations in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic. The aim is, upon analysing the response of organisations to the threats related to the COVID-19-caused restrictions on economic activity, to identify the predominant behaviour of organisations that predetermines their resilience. The theoretical part discusses the leadership aspect of the heads of organisations and the ability of organisations to survive in the conditions of uncertainty. The findings of the research in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) of Klaipėda Region are presented. The research methods chosen to deal with a scientific problem in the theoretical part include an analysis of literature sources, systematisation, synthesis, generalisation, and comparison. In the empirical research, quantitative research, i.e., a questionnaire survey and data processing methods, was applied. Due to the specificity of the region, the majority of the surveyed business entities (71.3%) are from the services sector, while the rest of the surveyed companies belong to the manufacturing (15%) and trade (13.7%) sectors. The research established that most of the organisations surveyed benefited from the government support. On assessing the survey data and summarising the response and efforts of organisations to deal with uncertainties, a conclusion was drawn that SMEs' response to uncertainties was mainly focused on the protection against threats and avoidance of risk, however, the organisations lacked preparedness and consistency when dealing with unforeseen circumstances.

Keywords: organisational resilience; small and medium-sized enterprise (SME); COVID-19 pandemic (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: M12 M21 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://jssidoi.org/jesi/uploads/articles/31/Zuper ... MEs_in_Lithuania.pdf (application/pdf)
https://jssidoi.org/jesi/article/769 (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:ssi:jouesi:v:8:y:2021:i:3:p:53-65

DOI: 10.9770/jesi.2021.8.3(4)

Access Statistics for this article

Entrepreneurship and Sustainability Issues is currently edited by Manuela Tvaronaviciene

More articles in Entrepreneurship and Sustainability Issues from VsI Entrepreneurship and Sustainability Center
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Manuela Tvaronaviciene ().