Entrepreneurial Resilience During a Crisis: Systematic Review and Integrative Framework

Abstract

The Covid-19 pandemic presents an urgent challenge and opportunity for entrepreneurial resilience research. A sub-set of broader research on general organisational resilience, extant research on entrepreneurial resilience remains limited, fragmented, and under-conceptualised. To address this gap, we conduct a systematic review of resilience and crisis research in entrepreneurship. Based on a review of 146 articles published in business and management journals, we propose an integrative framework that distinguishes between five dimensions of entrepreneurial resilience: agent, context, temporal orientation, enabler and outcome. We highlight key findings and salient features of received research along each dimension. Our findings contribute to entrepreneurial resilience literature by presenting a coherent research platform that integrates extant literature and supports future research. Building on the review, we consolidate the definition of entrepreneurial resilience as opportunity-seeking, opportunity pursuing and opportunity consolidating behaviour prior to, during, and after an external shock and introduce a distinction between static and dynamic resilience. The paper offers implications to support entrepreneurial adjustment and post-Covid recovery and informs timely policy responses.