Family-owned SMEs: Role models of crisis management A case study of how the practice of crisis management has been performed by nine Swedish family-owned SMEs during the Covid-19 pandemic

Abstract

Despite SMEs accounting for 99,9% of all registered firms in Sweden and that non-listed family-owned firms outperform their counterparts during crises, previous studies have neglected the field, resulting in an undiscovered void. Quantitative studies performed in the area serve a purpose for discovering how family-owned SMEs financially distinguish from other firms, but unfortunately such studies miss the important variable: what do they actually do? Through this qualitative study of crisis management as practice, we bridge the quantitative and qualitative, and present how Swedish family-owned SMEs have practiced crisis management during the Covid-19 pandemic. The practice of rapid decision-making, internal and external communication, and transparency, together with an overarching structure of continuous change clearly explains their excellence found in previous studies. Our concluding remarks point toward flexibility and adaptability being fundamental values integrated in the firms, enable the practitioners to make use of the three practices. In contrast to having a formulated plan for a crisis situation, the firms deliberately choose to handle foreign situations by relying on the core values and prepare for change by making them accessible for intake of information externally and internally, to act appropriately in relation to what the market conditions demand. In this way, crisis management is enforced in these firms through an amplification of their firm culture, which makes them consistently having the tools prepared for potential fast changes in markets.