The Impact of SMEs’ Decision-Making Processes on Their Resilience to Crises: A Literature Review and Future Research Directions

Abstract

Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are particularly exposed to crises because of their limited resources and strong dependence on managerial decision-making. Although organizational resilience has received growing scholarly attention, the specific relationship between SME decision-making processes and resilience in crisis contexts remains insufficiently understood. This article therefore addresses the following question: how do the decision-making processes adopted by SMEs during crises contribute to their resilience? The study draws on a literature review based on Scopus and ScienceDirect, covering publications available up to 2024, and supplemented by snowball sampling. A final corpus of 29 articles was analyzed. The findings indicate that SME resilience is shaped by the interaction between organizational characteristics, decision-makers’ profiles, and the decision-making approaches adopted during crises. They also reveal that the literature remains fragmented regarding the mechanisms through which decision-making contributes to resilience. By specifically connecting these two streams of research, this review extends broader work on organizational resilience and highlights the need for further investigation of causal and effectual decision-making logics under crisis conditions

Classification JEL : D81 ; L25 ; L26 ; M10

Paper type : Theoretical Research