Remodelling post-COVID 19 resilience of emerging market microenterprises

Abstract

Microenterprises have been valued for the development of emerging economies across demography. Though the opportunities of growth for microenterprises vary significantly across countries, their susceptibility to business environment-driven vulnerabilities, especially in emerging markets, has been of avid research interest. This study makes a novel contribution in viewing mindfulness as a differentiator in building resilience of microenterprises. Equating the need for disaster resilience to post-COVID 19 business remodelling for microenterprises in emerging markets, the study delves into qualitative multi-case research to propose an extension of the model of microenterprises’ survival post-COVID 19 pandemic by including mindfulness as a component. Three failed enterprises in three different sectors are taken as distinct experiments of structural, cognitive, and relational failure due to pandemic-induced disruptions. In this naturalistic enquiry, we validate the role of social capital in building resilience through detailed within-case descriptions and interpretations. Further, mindfulness is explored in the context of microenterprise resilience to build cognitive flexibility and alertness.