Resilient entrepreneurs are characterized by flexibility in their working methods and coping strategies as well as by their orientation towards solutions, goals and opportunities. All these factors have a positive effect on the decision-making, change and innovation processes in the company. A company is considered resilient if it is able to continue its business activities successfully in the long term after a sudden disruption.
Dr. Annette Icks, Dr. Siegrun Brink, Rebecca Weicht and Britta Levering have worked out the criteria for individual resilience during the Covid 19-pandemic based on the existing literature. According to the study, mental health, basic life satisfaction, personal emotions and anxieties, individual and societal attitudes as well as social and family networks have a particular impact on how well or poorly the individual resilience of the entrepreneur is developed.
At the beginning of 2022, the research team found how a company copes with a sudden shock depends crucially on the entrepreneur and his or her actions. They published their results in the IfM Bonn study "Business resilience: Influencing factors in the corona pandemic". A company is considered resilient if it can successfully continue its business activities in the long term after a sudden disruption.
"Digital transformation, Covid 19, sustainable business, war in Ukraine - a multitude of new situations are currently challenging small and Medium-sized enterprises. The more resilient entrepreneurs are, the more resilient SMEs in Germany as a whole will be. From a political point of view, all these challenges should therefore be considered holistically. This also includes taking into account the heterogeneity of the business sector as well as the diversity and interaction of the various influencing factors," says the project manager Dr Annette Icks.
