Publications

Summary

The objective of this research is to understand how the innovations developed by SMEs to navigate the crisis caused by COVID-19 manifest across four organizational levels: governance, strategy, structure, and operations. A multiple case study approach was chosen. Twenty-one organizations from the Outaouais region of Quebec participated, and 53 semi-structured interviews were conducted. The findings show that the disruptions caused by the crisis led to innovations at all four levels. At the governance level, interruptions or closures imposed by the pandemic led to adaptations at the regional level and a reinvention of business models. In terms of strategy, SMEs relied on government support measures and deployed information technologies to engage their customers online. For the structure level, maintaining efficiency involved reallocating resources to enable remote work. Finally, operational productivity issues in SMEs prompted improvements in both financial and psychological working conditions. The contribution of this empirical research lies in the differentiation of innovations across these four levels, offering a detailed representation of how SMEs navigated the crisis.