The effect of organizational resilience on the survival of SME exporters: The Role Of Entrepreneur Resilience And Environmental Turmoil

The study aims to analyze the effect of organizational resilience on the survival of SME exporters, the role of entrepreneurial resilience, and environmental turbulence. The study is based on a sample of 150 exporting SMEs from Ghana and uses Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) to analyze the hypotheses. The results show that organizational resilience positively impacts SME exporting firms’ survival; entrepreneurial resilience mediates the relationship between organizational resilience and firm survival. Similarly, the results show that introducing the moderator (environmental turmoil) decreases the positive relationship between organizational resilience and firm survival, with an accompanying graphical representation. The results imply that building on earlier research, integrating the resource-based view theory with the contingency theory of the external environment appears to be one of the best strategies for understanding the behavior of SME exporters in times of pandemic. Consequently, the study is an addition to the existing body of research that addresses trade disruptions during the COVID-19 pandemic and importantly, uses a fresh insight from Ghana, a sub-Saharan African country where the topic is under-explored.