Abstract
The COVID-19 pandemic has forced many firms to close, causing an unprecedented interruption in trade in most sectors of economic activity worldwide. Although global supply chains have been affected by the general lockdown, due to their particular characteristics, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) have been hit most severely by the measures implemented to prevent the spread of the virus. This study aims to determine how these firms coped with the disruption caused by the closure, in terms of population and their daily lives to carry out their economic activities. For this purpose, a qualitative methodology (descriptive and inductive) was used through the use of snowball sampling with a questionnaire in Portugal during the lockdown. The results obtained show that SMEs face a series of difficulties from interrupting their operations, which has caused serious liquidity problems, with effects on their future continuity and maintaining jobs. Additionally, it showed the importance of government measures to support these firms today and in the future, although the number of firms adhering to them is considerably affected by the eligibility criteria and the speed of institutions’ response. The main contribution of this research lies in confirming that the weaknesses in SMEs are the principal obstacle to a resilient response to this crisis, such as their limited liquidity, human resources, digitalization, and use of information technology. These weaknesses and/or threats had already been indicated in the various theoretical currents stemming from Organizational Theory, so the originality of this contribution lies in the fact that the managers of these SMEs are endowed with other skills and characteristics, such as, for example, dynamic capacities to manage business in an unparalleled crisis and to continue their operations, even when faced with a global blockage. Implications for theory and practice, limitations, and suggestions for future research are also presented.
1. Introduction
On 11 March 2020, the World Health Organisation (WHO) announced that the world was facing a pandemic caused by a new coronavirus, called COVID-19, which would disseminate exponentially. In these circumstances, all countries were urged to implement a general lockdown in an attempt to slow down its spread [1], and this has been a lengthy process. Survival depends on how the exit from this crisis will be managed [2], as the public health crisis will spread to and influence the whole economy, as argued by Baldwin and Weder [3]. The current pandemic crisis is different from previous crises (e.g., hurricanes, the financial crisis of 2008), as those emerged at a specific moment and in certain places, whereas COVID-19 has developed on a world scale, and controlling it has quickly damaged economies worldwide [4] and their business activities (national and international business) [5]. This causal relation between the emergence of a global lockdown and its economic and sanitary consequences has had a particular effect on micro-, small- and medium-sized firms, whether family-owned or not [6–10].
