External Events and Crises that Impact Firms and Other Entities

While crises do not occur frequently, their impact can be devastating as organizations are still vulnerable to man-made and natural crises. From terrorism, environmental, scientific, financial, political, pandemic to natural disasters, crises can occur at any moment, and if not managed efficiently and effectively can be disastrous. Thus, businesses can suffer not only loss of profit, but the ultimate demise of their business. It becomes increasingly difficult, at times, to prevent crises such as these. It then becomes difficult to develop practical means that can mitigate their undesirable effects once they occur. For instance, globally, businesses and industries of all sizes have experienced the effects of COVID-19, an external pandemic. The recovery process requires SMEs to rearrange and reestablish their missions, goals, and infrastructure of the business. This is an overwhelming challenge of recovering.

Historically, academics and practitioners have developed various management methodologies and technologies to help business manager's deal with challenges in their environments, yet many businesses fail. Thus, these challenges need to be researched more closely in order to overcome business failure. Many of these challenges are external events in which firms need to adapt and react. Getting the right adaptation and reaction to these external events will depend on whether a firm continues with success or fails altogether. Companies may fail due to their inability to properly respond to a crisis, whether it be a business or organizational crisis.

This book will identify strategies of SMEs that have recovered and how they recovered for preparation for future crises and other external impacts. It will showcase the resulting impact of external events such as environmental impact, like fires, or other impacts like the COVID-19 pandemic on businesses and educational entities. Specifically, it will discuss how SMEs or other businesses reacted through unexpected crisis. Therefore, the empirical contributions can be helpful for future entrepreneurs and current SMEs. The book will focus on external crisis including widespread environmental destruction, natural disasters, pandemic, sabotage by outsiders, and/or terrorism, and how firms can adapt and react.