Humanistic Management as a Driver of MSME Well-Being and Resilience during COVID-19: Multiple Case Study Research

Abstract

The Philippine economy is driven primarily by micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs), which were devastated in the few years of the global pandemic. An exploratory inductive holistic multiple case study anchored on stakeholder theory and thematic analysis was used in order to understand the decisions and actions that entrepreneurs make during times of extraordinary crisis that is also an existential threat to the business. The results suggest that MSMEs that survived were those whose core values were rooted in the humanistic management paradigm that employees are ends in themselves, not merely instruments to mainstream business ends.