Which crisis strategies are (expectedly) effective among SMEs during COVID-19?

Abstract

We investigate COVID-19 as a disabling and an enabling mechanism for small and mid-size enterprises (SMEs), particularly how SMEs’ crisis strategies might help them through the crisis. SMEs can follow a retrenchment strategy, a persevering strategy, or an innovation strategy, and they can do so narrowly or broadly. Using a representative sample of Danish SMEs, we test how crisis strategies are associated with turnover expectations. We find distinct differences in how effective crisis strategies are linked to turnover expectations, depending on how the crisis affected the SMEs in the first place (i.e., the SMEs were crisis victims, crisis immunes, or crisis exploiters).