Exogenous shocks and small- and medium-sized enterprise resilience: Evidence from the 2023 Kahramanmaraş earthquakes

The February 2023 Kahramanmaraş earthquakes in Türkiye created a severe exogenous shock for regional economies, causing extensive human, physical, and economic losses and disrupting the operations of thousands of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Although SMEs are especially vulnerable to such sudden-onset disasters because of their limited financial, operational, and managerial resources, existing research provides limited insight into how they mobilize resilience mechanisms in earthquake-affected emerging-economy contexts. This study examines how SME owners and managers in Kahramanmaraş interpreted, responded to, and adapted to the aftermath of the earthquakes. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with SME owners and managers across diverse sectors, supported by media sources and official reports, we develop an empirically grounded multi-level framework of small- and medium-sized enterprise resilience. The findings identify four interconnected resilience dimensions: operational resilience, financial resilience, human capital resilience, and strategic adaptation capabilities. These dimensions operate across individual, organizational, and inter-organizational levels. At the individual level, owner-manager cognitive and emotional responses shaped strategic decisions during the crisis. At the organizational level, digital preparedness, employee commitment, insurance literacy, and flexible operational arrangements influenced recovery capacity. At the inter-organizational level, trust-based relationships with suppliers, customers, and international partners provided critical financial, informational, and social support. The study extends small- and medium-sized enterprise resilience and crisis management research by offering an exploratory framework that specifies how individual cognition, organizational capabilities, and inter-organizational relationships jointly shape recovery after catastrophic earthquakes. Beyond its theoretical contribution, the framework provides a diagnostic basis for identifying small- and medium-sized enterprise vulnerabilities and designing targeted managerial and policy interventions across operational, financial, human capital, and inter-organizational domains. For practitioners and policymakers, the findings highlight the importance of pre-disaster digital infrastructure, adequate insurance literacy, employee-centered recovery policies, and trust-based supply chain relationships in strengthening small- and medium-sized enterprise resilience in disaster-prone regions.