Small and Medium-Sized Enterprise (SME) Resilience (eBook)

Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are considered particularly vulnerable to crisis situations due to their limited assets and resources as well as their great dependency on local customers. Holistic risk management is critical to the development of resilience in organizations. This book explores this situation by addressing risk management for SMEs holistically with a focus on continuous learning and the development of dynamic capabilities to increase resilience. It provides a broad overview of crisis/risk situations and their possible treatment in theory and practice discussed from different resilience perspectives. Featuring contributions from carefully selected experts, this book explores different types of small businesses and sectors to map the diversity and complexity of small business resilience practices. It not only helps SMEs facilitate rapid recovery from crises, but it also helps managers and professionals look to the future of their business with success by providing them with unique comparative research.

Susanne Durst is a Full Professor of Management at the Department of Business Administration at Reykjavik University (Iceland). Her research interests include small business management, knowledge (risk) management, innovation management and sustainable business development in the context of small entrepreneurial organizations. She has been conducting several national and international research projects. Her work has been awarded different awards and has been published in international peer-reviewed journals. Before joining academia, she worked with private enterprises of different sizes and industries.

Thomas Henschel is Professor in Management Accounting in the Business School, Hochschule für Technik und Wirtschaft Berlin (Germany). He has held visiting positions at universities in Italy, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. His research and teaching are in the areas of cost accounting and corporate governance. His specific research interests are in the areas of risk management and crisis management in small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). He has published widely in academic journals and serves on the editorial board of the Journal of International Business and Economic Affairs.