Abstract
From a managerial standpoint, sustainability poses numerous challenges for the business community. One of the prominent concerns in the context of organizational sustainability is the impact of climate change and extreme weather events (EWEs), which create discontinuity and damages to business operations. In this respect, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are particularly vulnerable to EWEs, such as flash floods, having disastrous consequences to SMEs that tend to be ill-prepared. Taking into consideration that these negatives effects are also transferred into the local communities in which SMEs are located, it is crucial to create appropriate mechanisms that will enable these enterprises to build relevant capacities and acquire necessary resources in order to deal with relevant disruptive events. With this in mind, this paper attempts to delineate the emerging literature in relation to strategic approaches in dealing with high impact/low probability EWEs. With this analysis, we aim to provide insights for enhancing the robustness of SMEs against such natural hazards through effective resilience and adaptation strategies. The paper reveals that resilience to EWEs is indeed a multifaceted issue posing numerous challenges to SMEs. Taking into account their intrinsic characteristics, there is a need for a holistic management approach that will assist SMEs to safeguard their assets against extreme weather.
Highlights
In the new era of sustainability transitions defined by the launch of United Nations’ 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, climate change adaptation sets key directions for formulating policies at global and national levels [1]
Given that small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are vulnerable to extreme weather events (EWEs), lacking adequate resources and managerial skills to minimize the negative impacts and successfully recover from such disruptions [15,23,43,81,86], it is crucial to assess the wide range of factors associated with the internal and external business environment in order for SMEs to become better-prepared against flooding and its damaging effects
Supporting arguments for this claim can be found in previous studies on flood impacts, which indicate that such events can be a defining moment in SME operation, causing numerous severe damages and, in a worst-case scenario, forcing them to cease operations [25,41,42,87]
Summary
In the new era of sustainability transitions defined by the launch of United Nations’ 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, climate change adaptation sets key directions for formulating policies at global and national levels [1]. Conceptual underpinnings of organizational resilience to weather extremes set forth a new prospect for corporate environmental management and strategic planning, under the scope of the inadequacy of existing environmental management systems to address challenges and impacts linked with EWEs [6] This is because environmental management approaches mainly focus on assisting a business to understand how their various operations and products/services affect environmental quality and how to implement effective policies, plans and programs to minimize negative environmental externalities. Various factors have been identified as explanatory parameters [39] with limitations in financial, managerial and human resources as primary ones [2,15,23,37,38] In this respect, it is of critical importance to examine the wide spectrum of factors which facilitate or discourage SMEs to develop their resilience capacity due to the fact that the impacts of EWEs on SMEs could bring significant problems at local, regional and/or national levels (for instance, supply chains experiencing long-term interruptions or ceasing to function). The great impacts of SMEs on the economic development, at all levels, clearly shows the necessity for effective tools for preparing them for EWEs
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