Factors Influencing Sustainable Resilience of Social Enterprises During the Different Phases of the COVID-19 Pandemic

Introduction

Social entrepreneurs impact society by creating social value. The economies of developing countries like India significantly depend on social enterprises, so making such social enterprises sustainable will help achieve the sustainable development goals of the nations (Saqib and Zhang, 2021). Sustainability broadly covers environmental, social, and economic aspects, and this concept has guided social enterprises in improving their sustainability performance (Govindan et al., 2020). Since the operations of social enterprises depend on several internal and external business environment factors, the implementation of sustainable resilience practices at each level becomes a challenge (Saqib and Zhang, 2021). Further, due to limited resources and poor infrastructure, social entrepreneurs face many challenges in adopting sustainable practices (Hong et al., 2021). Apart from this, social entrepreneurs also need to improve the flow of information, materials, and funds with the other supply chain entities to gain sustainable resilience (Kamboj and Rana, 2021). The complexity of the decisions in the supply chain during a pandemic can be resolved only by integrating sustainable resilience in the supply chain. Social enterprises need to recuperate from disruptions and fulfill their social, environmental, and economic function.

The COVID-19 pandemic has distressing impacted many industries (Chowdhury et al., 2021), and social enterprises are not an exception. The concept of sustainability requires immediate attention from all types of organizations in today’s scenario. While many companies have realized and accepted the importance of sustainability, implementing sustainable business practices remains a considerable challenge (Moktadir et al., 2020), especially for social entrepreneurs. Among the various enterprises, the challenge is more demanding for the social enterprises as they use obsolete methods and techniques and have resource constraints. Despite the limitations, social entrepreneurs have been implementing the necessary changes to make the business processes more sustainable and resilient.

The term ‘resilience’ has become very prominent during the COVID-19 pandemic in recent months. Resilience is the capability of a system, or individual, to handle change and continue to grow. Sustainability deals with the capacity to meet the needs of the present without compromising the ability to meet future generations' needs. The lack of resilience among the social enterprises will pose a threat to their existence and the vulnerable groups they work with. It will ultimately lead to their struggle for recovery. When the resilience of a social enterprise is strengthened, it will be well-prepared to endure shocks and recuperate more rapidly and at less cost. Social enterprises face several critical situations daily. Considering the number and magnitude of such problems, a social enterprise’s ability to resist, absorb and become more robust is the critical differentiator. In other words, the ability to overcome the impact and recover from the effect of a crisis in the short term is essential to building resilience over a long time. It will develop the sustainable resilience of a social enterprise. This is the key to enabling a social enterprise to become proactive and take forward-looking steps for sustainability.