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2022 | OriginalPaper | Chapter
33. Strategic Agility and Economic Environment’s Friendliness-Hostility in Explaining Performance of Polish SMEs in the Phase of COVID-19 Pandemic
Authors : Tomasz Sikora, Ewa Baranowska-Prokop
Published in: Advances in Quantitative Economic Research
Publisher: Springer International Publishing
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Abstract
The main purpose of this article is to present the relationship between two factors: perceived environmental hostility (or friendliness) and strategic agility with market performance of Polish SMEs from medium-tech and high-tech industries during COVID-19 pandemic. This research directly refers to analogical study analyzing the role of the two variables in the period just before COVID-19 (Sikora & Baranowska-Prokop, Advances in longitudinal data methods in applied economic research, Springer Proceedings in Business and Economics, 2021).
Research results revealed that respondents interviewed during the period of entire second lockdown in December 2020–January 2021 evaluated external environment as more friendly (none of the respondents evaluated environment as “unfriendly”) compared to their pre-COVID counterparts interviewed during May–July 2019. Moreover, in contrast to the previous research, neither strategic agility nor environmental hostility–friendliness showed significant relationships with firms’ results. These unexpected findings may be explained in regards to several factors:
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In general, industry was hit less severely by lockdowns than services (most of respondents declared only “moderately” negative impact of COVID-19-related restrictions on the environment their firm operated and the relationship between the declared number of COVID-19 related consequences and market performance was weak).
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Efficacy of government’s programs within the framework of “Anti-crisis Shield” (introduced in Poland end-March 2020) providing subsidies for enterprises (to maintain financial liquidity and employment).
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Favorable macro-environment in which the local currency (considered as undervalued) helped both exporters making them more price-competitive and manufacturing firms operating on the local market by “insulating” them from cheaper imports.
In our opinion, friendly macro-environment, availability of public assistance programs, and firms’ capability to get money from them (which need further research) were decisive factors influencing Polish firms’ performance, whereas strategic agility, as operationalized in this study and in the previous one, did not matter as significant predictor of firms’ success.