Position Paper: Resilience in SMEs—What Philosophy and Ethics Got to Do with It?

This position paper explores the philosophical and ethical dimensions of resilience in Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs). Amid turbulent times, resilience has emerged as a potential core value for SMEs, thus necessitating a deeper understanding of its conceptualization. Resilience is a complex set of organizational qualities, akin to an intangible cultural mindset. This perspective advocates for embracing inherent fallibility and the uncertainty of the business environment. The paper further illustrates the role of philosophical inquiry in developing a mindset conducive to resilience and underscores the ethical implications of incorporating resilience into an organization’s ethos. Highlighting a gap in current research, it concludes with a call for more philosophical exploration of the concept of resilience in SMEs.