Planned, improvised or resilience: Small business owner-managers’ perception and response to crises in crisis-prone environments

This article addresses a fundamental question concerning planning, improvisation and resilience in the context of crisis management and business continuity. We seek to explore when and how small business owner-managers respond to crisis situations and cope with associated challenges to their business operations. This question remains unresolved, despite substantial progress in the crisis management and small business literature, which still produces opposing empirical findings and theoretical arguments. While one view supports strengthening existing planned responses to crises; the other view argues and finds support for improvised responses. Drawing on inductive multiple-case study approach, we extend previous research on crisis management by focusing on its planned, improvised and resilience dimensions. The purpose is to provide empirical insights about owner-managers’ perception and response to crises in a crisis-prone environment and complement it with theoretical insights from normal accident and high reliability theories to have a balanced view of crisis management practices within small businesses. We found that crisis planning, improvisation and resilience that occurs simultaneously in the crisis management process is more valuable and enrich crisis management practices of small businesses. We conclude by proposing specific areas for future research in relation to crises and resilience in crisis-prone environment.