Abstract:
This paper is a snap literature review on the crisis resilience of small and medium enterprises (SMMEs) during
the COVID-19 pandemic. SMMEs are considered significant drivers of economic activity in both the developed
and developing worlds. It is therefore important to keep an eye on what goes on in the SMME sector in the
interest of preserving them as well as enhancing their performance thereby ensuring their continued contribution
to economic activity. The recent COVID-19 pandemic provides an appropriate proxy for examining various
business and management aspects, including SMME crisis resilience. This study examined sources, mainly peer
reviewed journal papers, from around the world, focusing on determining the nature of challenges experienced
by SMMEs during COVID-19, the crisis resilience strategies employed, and their effectiveness. This provided an
evidence-based starting point for the formulation of robust recommendations to promote the building of
resilience into SMMEs anywhere. The study found that the least researched contexts of SMME resilience are
industry-specific, African, and the developing world. Additionally, SMMEs were found to be generally
vulnerable to various challenges during crises. During COVID-19, SMMEs responded by adopting different
strategies which were effective to varying degrees based on context-specific factors such as access, policies, and
regulations. Consequently, more context-specific empirical resilience studies are needed especially in the least
researched contexts like Africa and the developing word.
