Microbusiness Collaboration as a Strategy to Increase Resilience in Natural Disasters

Abstract

Microbusiness, MB, importance for the global economy is uncontestable; they have huge participation of the world's production. In Peru, small-and medium-enterprises, SMEs, are 99% of the total of existing companies and contribute approximately 47% of the country's GDP; MBs are grouped within SMEs. They are the greatest generators of employment, although this may be informal and of poor quality. MBs confront difficulties, mainly due to their limited human and financial resources. Theories around how to deal with it have been developed mainly with big enterprises in mind, and this has little connection with what happens inside MBs. Accordingly, this chapter offers “collaboration” as a response strategy in case of a disruptive event to support MB resilience construction. This is contextualized from the experience of the Peruvian Costal El Niño 2017 and illustrated through the actions that a MB case (a beekeeper) took to deal with it.