Systematizing Body of Knowledge on Business Challenges and Strategizing Post COVID-19: A Literature Review and Agenda for Research

Introduction

Although there has been a surge in research interest on SME businesses, the global COVID-19 health crisis has impacted on nations, organizations and individuals everywhere (Carnevale & Hatak, 2020). Such a crisis has ushered in changes in the workplace, in personal lives, in our networking capabilities and organizations’ abilities to address challenges such as performance, production and remote working (Gerald et al., 2020; McGeever et al., 2020; Nyanga & Zirima, 2020). SMEs have borne the brunt of the predominantly financial challenges (Brown, 2020; McGeever et al., 2020). For example, Le et al. (2020) highlighted how hundreds of SMEs had to deal with a surge in interest rate repayments to their loans which further strained their capability to obtain additional credit facilities and to be productive. The reporting of these and other challenges on SMEs have highlighted the nature and scale that the devasting economic effects have had on the health, emotional wellbeing and networking capabilities of smaller firms and their members (Nyanga & Zirima, 2020). The question that is yet to be fully addressed in relation to such an unprecedented worldwide crisis is ‘What types of responses/strategies do organizations (such as SMEs), whose existence has been adversely challenged even before the pandemic, need to adopt to address the constraints’ in a way that the emerging research has considered as dynamic (Ratnasingam et al. 2020)?’ The initial sets of recommendations from emerging research suggest the adoption of digital technologies, using a mixture of smarter and more agile forms of working, inter-connected remote working mechanisms and hybrid working patterns to counter the negative impacts of the crisis on people’s health and wellbeing (Kim et al., 2022; Trougakos et al., 2020). The claim has been made by Trougakos and their followers that such recommendations embody promises to alleviate the economic, operational and health pressures that national governments and managers of organizations have recently experienced whilst softening the blow on policy designers, implementers and employees’ stress, anxiety and depression as a result of the pandemic (Mao et al., 2020). It is also claimed by Ratnasingam et al. (2020) that such changes in the workplace could have the additional benefits of resolving the acute performance, production and financial crises that have lately threatened the very existence of SMEs. The range of recommendations and claims regarding how beneficial they are, have still not addressed the crucial question whether these have the potential of addressing SMEs’ endemic financial, operational and people-resourcing related challenges in a more networked framework other than the scientific one claimed by Hobday et al. (2020).

The researcher’s aim in this chapter is to examine the literature and research on the scientific body of knowledge available on the challenges that the ongoing health crisis has incurred on SMEs, their impacts and how they have sought to address them. The researcher explores scholarly insights from a range of studies in this area to see how the findings/results can be systematized and synthesized to provide research-based evidence on how a health crisis of this magnitude could be managed in ways that are more coordinated and beneficial not only for organizations but also for governments and people globally. The researcher contributes to systematizing the available body of knowledge in this area such that the dynamic complexities of the pandemic are greatly understood that such knowledge facilitates better management by SMEs’ leaders. Additionally, the action areas developed from the insights provide impetus and impact on the types of strategies and ideas needed to deal with the adversities similar to COVID-19.