Examining entrepreneurial successes and failures during the COVID-19 pandemic (2019–2023)
Journal of Small Business and Enterprise Development
ISSN: 1462-6004
Article publication date: 15 November 2023
Issue publication date: 4 December 2023
Abstract
Purpose
When entrepreneurship scholars and policy makers turned their attention to entrepreneurial ventures during the COVID-19 pandemic (2019–2023), its full effects on entrepreneurial firms and systems presented radically challenging questions and unresolved puzzles. In this paper, the authors shed light on these questions and puzzles with a large-scale empirical examination of the pandemic's overall effects on entrepreneurs, entrepreneurial firms, entrepreneurial environments and responses with a view toward success and failure over time.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors adopt a broad exploratory approach and examine different perspectives to develop a deeper understanding of the COVID-19 pandemic's effects on entrepreneurs, entrepreneurial firms, entrepreneurial environments and responses especially regarding the success and failure of entrepreneurial ventures during the pandemic. Thus, the authors built a dataset with 10 survey waves from 2020 to 2021, with an average of 7,000 Brazilian entrepreneurial ventures (SMEs) in each wave of the survey. The authors used this data to examine their performance and survival.
Findings
The findings suggest that the increase of the COVID-19 virus contagion per se did not severely affect entrepreneurial ventures' performance and survival. However, the worsening of the COVID-19 pandemic did weaken entrepreneurial ventures' performance and survival. Moreover, the findings suggest that entrepreneur education has an inverted U-shaped relationship with entrepreneurial ventures performance. Indigenous, Brown and Black entrepreneurs experienced decreased entrepreneurial ventures survival compared to White entrepreneurs. While entrepreneurial ventures that adopted digital technologies and had access to loans increased their performance and survival during the COVID-19 pandemic, those who failed in these aspects experienced negative performance and survival effects. Thus, although the COVID-19 pandemic severely impacted many entrepreneurial ventures and even forced some to close, others survived and even prospered during the environmental shock.
Originality/value
The paper sheds light on a little understood topic: entrepreneurial venture success and failure in the COVID-19 pandemic.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank the editor and the anonymous reviewers for their helpful feedback and guidance during the review process. Likewise, the authors thank SEBRAE for access to the data.
Since submission of this article, the following author have updated their affiliation: Cinara Gambirage is at the Department of Innovation Management and Strategy, University of Groningen, Netherlands.
Funding: The authors acknowledge scholarship from the Center for Competitiveness and Innovation Studies (CECIN) from the Brazilian School of Public and Business Administration – FGV.
Citation
Gambirage, C., Cyrino, A.B., Caetano da Silva, J., Barbosa, L.G.M. and Parente, R.C. (2023), "Examining entrepreneurial successes and failures during the COVID-19 pandemic (2019–2023)", Journal of Small Business and Enterprise Development, Vol. 30 No. 7, pp. 1298-1328. https://doi.org/10.1108/JSBED-03-2022-0152
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2023, Emerald Publishing Limited