Organizational Learning Capacity and Sustainability Challenges in Times of Crisis: A Study on Tourism SMEs in Galicia (Spain)

Diego R Toubes,José A Fraiz-Brea,Noelia Araújo-Vila

doi:10.3390/su132111764

Abstract

The COVID-19 crisis has encouraged a major shift towards greater environmental awareness and sustainable consumption. However, in times of severe crisis, SMEs primarily look to return to normalcy and their own survival rather than implementing a sustainable agenda. This paper aims to contribute to the understanding of the learning problems faced by small tourism enterprises in a crisis such as the COVID-19 pandemic. This paper explores the learning capacity of SMEs and the importance of establishing mechanisms that provide SMEs with the keys to organizational learning as a source of continuous knowledge. Open-ended semi-structured interviews with 39 tourism SMEs managers in Galicia (Spain) were conducted during the toughest months of the COVID-19 pandemic. The results show that SMEs have not been fully involved in the learning process, which is mainly related to knowledge transfer and integration. DMOs can act as promoters of knowledge management for organizational preparedness by providing SMEs with learning mechanisms and strategies to go beyond simple problem solving when they arise.

Highlights

The COVID-19 pandemic has made tourism organizations more vulnerable
Despite the fact that the companies interviewed were located in a tourist area that has suffered the impact of major disasters in the last ten years, only a third of them claimed to have a crisis plan and a little more than half have taken out a policy that insures the risk of crisis due to a catastrophe
This was confirmed, even more markedly, in the answers we obtained in the interviews in relation to the little interest shown by business managers in establishing prevention systems or tools that allow learning from past experiences

Summary

Introduction

The COVID-19 pandemic has made tourism organizations more vulnerable. The new reality has forced organizations to renounce pre-existing certainties that have been invalidated, which has made successful planning very difficult to undertake. Tourism organizations must firstly know what their main vulnerabilities are and, secondly, understand how to assume these vulnerabilities and integrate them into the organization’s planning and strategy and into daily management. This is a complex learning process for companies, especially for SMEs and in a crisis context. The first focuses on building resilience, obtained in an endogenous self-organization process, which facilitates adaptation to changing situations [1,2,3], whereas the second considers learning as part of crisis preparation [4,5] Both visions have a proactive approach that has been widely discussed in the academic literature. This approach focuses mainly on the management of extraordinary events from which we try to learn

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