Organizational Resilience Capabilities and Operational Capabilities in Smes: A Systematic Literature Review

This paper presents a systematic literature review of the relationship between organizational resilience capabilities (ORC) and operational capabilities in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), covering Scopus-indexed research published between 2015 and 2022. Following the PRISMA protocol, 143 records were initially identified, screened according to predefined inclusion and exclusion criteria, and ultimately reduced to 41 peer-reviewed journal articles for full-text analysis. Three research questions guided the synthesis: what operational capabilities have been associated with ORC in SMEs (RQ1); what antecedents, outcomes, and theoretical frameworks explain this relationship (RQ2); and what research gaps persist (RQ3). The review reveals that dynamic capabilities — particularly sensing, seizing, and reconfiguring — are the dominant theoretical lens, appearing in nearly three-quarters of included studies. Supply chain agility, flexibility, and risk management emerge as the most consistently documented operational capabilities, though their relative importance varies by disruption type, firm size, and geographic context. Emerging economies account for over half of empirical contributions, yet comparative studies with developed-economy SMEs remain scarce. A research agenda is proposed around five priority gaps: the moderating role of firm size in capability effectiveness; the dynamics of capability deployment across disruption phases; the decoupling of resilience from financial performance under systemic shocks; the underexplored contribution of social and family capital; and the absence of longitudinal designs capable of capturing capability evolution.