Managerial Resilience and Performance: A Human Capital Approach

Abstract

Managerial resilience is a strategic resource within the contingencies of organizing in small businesses. In this regard, the notion of resilient human capital has come to dominate the contemporary discourse on the performance of Micro and Small Enterprises. Drawing on human capital theory as a meta-theoretical lens, we examine the cumulative effect of managerial training on the performance of Micro and Small Enterprise (MSE) in the context of relatively underdeveloped institutions and markets. Employing a quantitative research methodology, data for our empirical inquiry comes from a survey of 506 Ghanaian MSEs operating in diverse sectors of the economy. Following MSEs being at the convergence point of resource constraint, we show why some firms’ managers are more likely to exhibit managerial resilience than those in other firms. Our data evidence suggest that targeted managerial training, in practice, has the potential to strengthen managerial resilience. Nevertheless, the content, efficiency, and frequency of the training received, we argue, accounts for the differential performance of managers within the contingencies of everyday organizing. We conclude by delineating some relevant implications of our study for the theory and practice of managerial resilience nurturing in organizing.