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Resilient by Design: Enabling Agility and Resilience in Ontario’s Small and Medium Enterprises

Zubair, Ayesha (2021) Resilient by Design: Enabling Agility and Resilience in Ontario’s Small and Medium Enterprises. [MRP]

Item Type: MRP
Creators: Zubair, Ayesha
Abstract:

At the time of writing this report, Canada has completed one year of lockdowns and restrictions due to COVID-19. The world is grappling with disruption at a scale that we haven’t experienced in recent years. The devastation COVID has wreaked through the Small and Medium Enterprise (SME) community is just starting to show and it is expected to get worse. In 2020, Canada lost almost 58,000 businesses and by Canadian Federation of Independent Business’ (CFIB’s) estimates, Canada could lose between 71,000 to 222,000 businesses which equate to 7% to 21%, respectively. With up to almost 3 million jobs at stake, it is not hard to imagine the devastation that this could unleash. SMEs make up almost the entirety of Canada’s economy, with 98.8% of businesses in Canada being organizations with 1-499 employees. Without question, where there is impact to Canadian SMEs, there is impact to Canada’s well-being. Agility and resilience offer SMEs a way forward. This study looks to answer the main research question of: what are the elements of agility and resilience and how might they enable us to implement resilience in Ontario SMEs? In answering this question, this study explores the relationship between the two concepts and adds in an original contribution that enumerates the dimensions of resilience that can be used to evaluate resilience at the time of impact. In addition, original contributions of this study also include seven elements of agility and resilience and an accompanying Agility and Resilience Maturity Model that can enable SMEs to not only identify their current-state resilience but also to have a roadmap of transformation for resilience.

Date: 2021
Uncontrolled Keywords: Small Business, Small and Medium Enterprise, SME, SMEs, Resilience, Resilient, Agility, Agile, Resilience Measurement, Maturity Model
Divisions: Graduate Studies > Strategic Foresight and Innovation
Date Deposited: 07 May 2021 19:11
Last Modified: 20 Dec 2021 20:45
URI: https://openresearch.ocadu.ca/id/eprint/3388

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