More Than a Catching Name? Entrepreneurial Ecosystem, Risk Anticipation and SMEs’ Resilience

Abstract

This study investigates whether the commitment to risk anticipation influences small and medium enterprises’ (SMEs) resilience. Moreover, the research adds the entrepreneurial ecosystem (EE) mobilization to the analysis. Specifically, we study how the EE mobilization of SMEs coping with adversities relates with both risk anticipation and resilience. In doing so, we are aimed at contributing to resilience and EE literature, which overlooked the study of the relationship between the EE and resilience at the firm level. The exploitation of the EE resources may be useful for SMEs that cope with crises, as they rarely anticipate risks implementing the best (and costly) practice. Testing the impact of the EE mobilization on firms’ resilience may help us in clarifying – at least partially – the cause-effect network of the EE. This leads us to engage in the debate whether the EE is just a catching name or a valuable and usable construct. Drawing on the resilient response model, we develop a framework that includes risk anticipation and EE mobilization. To test our hypotheses, we estimate OLS regression and probit models using a dataset of 761 questionnaires. These were collected from London, Milan and Frankfurt SMEs’ entrepreneurs that experienced a crisis in the year before the research. We find that the commitment to risk anticipation enhances the EE mobilization level, that, in turn, increases SMEs’ probability of showing a resilient response. Surprisingly, no direct effect is found between commitment to risk anticipation and resilience. Results are commented drawing on High Reliability Organization theory: in particular, we argue that the mobilization of the EE increases the effectiveness and the efficiency of the activation and detection phases that characterize the critical period following the disruption. We posit that a crucial role is played by the increased variety of perspectives obtained via the EE mobilization, that supports a deeper understanding of the threat and a richer generation of solutions. Beside the scholarly debate about the value of the EE – to which we contribute demonstrating an empirical application of the construct –, from the results we derive managerial and policy implications concerning SMEs’ entrepreneurs’ strategies and EE planners’ initiatives.