On entrepreneurial resilience among micro-entrepreneurs in the face of economic disruptions… A little help from friends

While much has been written about resilience in the supply chain management (SCM) literature, most investigations focus on large corporations from the perspective of helping them bounce back after disruptions. There has been little investigation on resilience among the weakest and smallest members of the global supply chain—that is, small entrepreneurs at the bottom of the pyramid (BOP). This is despite the fact that these micro-entrepreneurs are often key cogs in the last-mile supply chain efforts of major multinational corporations. They experience disruptions at a higher rate than major corporations, have fewer formal mechanisms in place to recover from them, and are often unable to "bounce back" in the traditional sense. In the current study, we address this gap by investigating multiple types of disruptions (i.e., idiosyncratic and covariate) and how they impact entrepreneurial resilience among microbusinesses in an emerging economy. In addition, we look at the buffering impact of various actors (i.e., financial and social) on entrepreneurship in the face of these disruptions. We highlight the important role that these entrepreneurs play in the BOP supply chain and provide suggestions that can assist with improving their resilience and the resilience of the BOP supply chain.