Resilience and entrepreneurship: a systematic review [version 1; peer review: awaiting peer review]

Abstract

Background: The concept of resilience runs through an array of disciplines, consisting of engineering, public health, ecology, psychology, sociology, disaster management, and business administration. Researchers have tries to explain the relationship amongst connected ideas such as resiliency, adaptability, transformability, and vulnerability but their varied definitions and differences between them remain fuzzy. There are two reasons why resilience theory is important in entrepreneurship. Firstly, researchers generally employ the term resilience to mean consciousness, determination, perseverance, or self-value to justify why some entrepreneurs and their firms achieve better results than their non resilient counterparts. Secondly, there are cognitive and behavioral entrepreneurial traits that strengthen a firm’s capability to adapt to varying conditions. The aim of this study is to review the literature that intercepts resilience and entrepreneurship. The study will attempt to identify scholarly conversations to construct notions of resilience and entrepreneurship. Therefore, limitations in the current literature will be examined and directions for future studies would be highlighted. Methods: This paper adopted a systematic interdisciplinary review of relevant studies that is patterned using the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA). Results: The scholarly works selected from the literature portrayed six emerging colloquies or research tributaries that intercept entrepreneurship and resilience: • Resilience as a function of entrepreneurial individuals or firms, • Resilience generating entrepreneurial intentions, Entrepreneurial behavior boosting organizational resilience and, • • Resilience in the framework of entrepreneurial failure, • Entrepreneurship and culture, • Resilience as a process of recovery and transformation. Conclusions: This study serves as a backdrop for the emergence of more nuanced debates on the relationship that exists between different streams of conversations on resilience. In addition, this paper shows how entrepreneurs contribute towards promoting a constructively sustainable means for socio-economic development.