The Impact of COVID-19 on Sustainable Business Models in SMEs
Faculty of Organization and Informatics, University of Zagreb, 42000 Varaždin, Croatia
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Academic Editors: Artūras Kaklauskas and Ajith Abraham
Sustainability 2021, 13(3), 1098; https://doi.org/10.3390/su13031098
Received: 16 December 2020
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Revised: 10 January 2021
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Accepted: 19 January 2021
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Published: 21 January 2021
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Decision Support Systems and Multiple Criteria Decision Making for Sustainable Development)
Businesses have been exposed to various challenges during the global pandemic, and their response to this disruption has impacted their resilience as well as their chances to overcome this crisis. Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are changing their business models in order to adapt to this changing environment. Service-based industries have been hit particularly hard. This research investigates how SMEs operating in service industries have been coping with the disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. This research aims to gain insights into which transformation drivers they have focused on and which technologies they have selected as a means to respond to the disruption. These insights regarding SMEs are then explored according to their influence on the redefinition of sustainable business models in SMEs. The review data was analyzed via a customized research framework that contains three dimensions and 30 subconcepts. The results show the distribution of drivers and technologies across service sectors. They are organized into a Business Model Canvas and could be considered useful for academia and practitioners. The highly unpredictable environment allows for only a few feasible strategic approaches regarding an SME’s decision on to follow incumbents, to become a challenger, or to reinvent themselves based on their own transformation drivers and readiness to apply digital technologies.
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Keywords:
SMEs; COVID 19; service sector; transformation drivers; digital technologies; business model
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MDPI and ACS Style
Gregurec, I.; Tomičić Furjan, M.; Tomičić-Pupek, K. The Impact of COVID-19 on Sustainable Business Models in SMEs. Sustainability 2021, 13, 1098. https://doi.org/10.3390/su13031098
AMA Style
Gregurec I, Tomičić Furjan M, Tomičić-Pupek K. The Impact of COVID-19 on Sustainable Business Models in SMEs. Sustainability. 2021; 13(3):1098. https://doi.org/10.3390/su13031098
Chicago/Turabian StyleGregurec, Iva, Martina Tomičić Furjan, and Katarina Tomičić-Pupek. 2021. "The Impact of COVID-19 on Sustainable Business Models in SMEs" Sustainability 13, no. 3: 1098. https://doi.org/10.3390/su13031098
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