Abstract
The issue of business resilience is a topical one, in the context of which a large number of the companies on the market have faced many challenges in the last two years, raising the issue of market survival. But was the Romanian business environment ready to face the COVID-19 crisis? How prepared is it to continue to face the obstacles posed by the pandemic? The purpose of this paper is to identify the main effects that the pandemic has generated on Romanian SMEs, while presenting the results of a study on this topic. We proceeded to determine the level of familiarity of respondents on the evolution of SMEs during the pandemic and the study of their level of interest, on the effects generated by the current epidemiological context, and on the evolution of the business environment, while analysing the level of optimism/pessimism of the respondents, regarding the general evolution of the Romanian business environment. Although some companies are open to implementing change, there is also a significant percentage of firms that, for various reasons, do not consider making major changes in the near future, either because they are not aware of the need for change or out of fear.
Highlights
The Romanian business environment can be characterized from multiple perspectives as unstable, fragile, even insecure; it has a significant development potential.The years before 1989, as well as a difficult, rather rigid mentality inherited from the past, along with general instability and a number of other micro and macroeconomic factors, contributed to the establishment of a general economic fragility.the period between March 2020 and the present moment has not been a re-invigoration of the context, but, on the contrary, the business environment has begun to be increasingly subjected to significant challenges, especially in the category of small and medium-sized enterprises, these being the most affected
At the very least, that at a time when the economy is undergoing major changes whose long-term effects affect job security and stability, individuals would show a higher level of interest in the evolution of the business sector
In the context in which the COVID-19 crisis showed strong effects on the business environment, the management of the companies identified a series of risks possible to be included in a future strategic risk plan
Summary
The Romanian business environment can be characterized from multiple perspectives as unstable, fragile, even insecure; it has a significant development potential.The years before 1989, as well as a difficult, rather rigid mentality inherited from the past, along with general instability and a number of other micro and macroeconomic factors, contributed to the establishment of a general economic fragility.the period between March 2020 and the present moment has not been a re-invigoration of the context, but, on the contrary, the business environment has begun to be increasingly subjected to significant challenges, especially in the category of small and medium-sized enterprises, these being the most affected. The number of cases has been increasing, and the strategies applied at the level of certain companies have largely transposed the work of employees in the online environment, frequently using telework as a “survival” solution, while other companies have closed their doors permanently, sending the human resource into unemployment, interspersing a business crisis with the already existing medical crisis. This crisis is exacerbated as governments are reluctant to implement firm solutions to combat the effects of the pandemic, and plan to threaten to impose restrictions that could push the business environment into an even bigger abyss by imposing mandatory sanitary conditions on employees
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