Accessing factors influencing business resilience: A conceptual framework

Abstract

This paper discusses the interdependencies among entrepreneurial orientation, digital adoption, institutional support, and business resilience within micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs). Business resilience may be understood as the capacity of businesses to anticipate, absorb, adapt to, and recover from disruption. Entrepreneurial orientation is claimed to boost resilience through the encouragement of innovation, proactivity, and risk-taking; digital adoption strengthens resilience by means of facilitating technologies that improve continuity, flexibility, and market coverage; institutional support in the form of policies, funding, and capacity building anchors the resilience of companies in crisis. Based on current Malaysian and other emerging economy empirical evidence, the paper proposes a conceptual framework whereby entrepreneurial orientation and institutional support both directly influence and interact with digital adoption to inform business resilience. The framework offers testable hypotheses and measurement suggestions for the assessment of these drivers in MSMEs. The model developed here is intended to guide subsequent empirical research and policy formulation to strengthen resilience of MSMEs against growing uncertainty.