ENTREPRENEURIAL RESILIENCE AND BUSINESS CONTINUITY: A STUDY OF SELECTED SMALL-SCALE ENTERPRISES IN EBONYI STATE

Abstract

This paper studied “entrepreneurial resilience and business continuity with a focus on small
scale enterprises in Ebonyi State. It examined the extent to which opportunity recognition,
capacity building and entrepreneurial action affected business continuity in the selected
small-scale enterprises in Ebonyi State. 260 management and staff of some selected small-
scale enterprises formed the population of this study. Survey research design was adopted
and a structured questionnaire was used to elucidate responses from respondents. Data
generated from the field survey were subjected to initial diagnostic for reliability to ascertain
the usability of the study constructs. Data were analyzed using Pearson’s correlation analysis
and further subjected to multiple linear regression analysis to test the stated hypotheses.
Results of the correlation showed that opportunity recognition had a=0.863, capacity
building had a=0.791 and entrepreneurial action had a=0.880 respectively. These measures
were well above the threshold of 0.7 Cronbach Alpha and showed positive effect on business
continuity (a=0.752}. This implied that variations in entrepreneurial resilience would
significantly influence business continuity in Ebonyi State, Nigeria. The implication of these
results is that absence of entrepreneurial resilience is one of the major grounds of early
business exit. The recommendation of this study was that entrepreneurial resilience is a
function of the ability of an entrepreneur to recognize opportunities in the
environment/market, mobilize resources towards addressing those identified needs in a
profitable and stable manner, and that optimal performance of this task continuously will
ensure business continuity.