The performance implications of strategic responses of SMEs to the covid-19 pandemic: Evidence from an African economy

ABSTRACT How does the use of adaptive resilience (perseverance and retrenchment) as a strategic response influence the performance of SMEs during catastrophic events such as the COVID-19 pandemic? This study examines how adaptive resilience in the form of perseverance and retrenchment has influenced the performance of SMEs during the COVID-19 pandemic. We also investigate the indirect effects of adaptive resilience on performance through strategic renewal, and the conditional indirect effect of adaptive resilience on performance through strategic renewal at different levels of organizational slack. We use multi-source data from managers and owners of 249 SMEs in Ghana and analyze the data using the conditional process analysis software, PROCESS. The results demonstrate that there were no direct relationships between perseverance and performance or retrenchment and performance. We also find that strategic renewal mediates the relationships between both perseverance and retrenchment on performance. Moreover, we find a conditional indirect effect of both perseverance and retrenchment on performance, such that the indirect effect of both perseverance and retrenchment on performance through strategic renewal is high at higher levels of organizational slack. We discuss implication of the findings for theory and practice.