Small-business resilience in a remote tourist destination: exploring close relationship capabilities on the island of St Helena

Abstract

We investigate how small businesses in a very remote island tourist destination are able to cope with shocks and disruptions they face, that is, their resilience. Given their size and resource limitations as well as disadvantages due to lack of accessibility and remoteness, we expect resilience in these types of firms to be underpinned by their close relationships with other local stakeholders. Drawing on concepts from Instrumental Stakeholder Theory (IST), we explore how close relationship capabilities with stakeholders affect small business resilience on the remote tourist destination of St Helena. Through in-depth interviews with the owner-managers of seven case firms on the island we identify how aspects of IST are relevant to resilience, while also uncovering emerging variables of interest. To make sense of these variables we use a Fuzzy Cognitive Mapping (FCM) approach, capturing respondents’ mental models in graphical form. The result supports IST by reinforcing the positive effects of valuable partners and mutually beneficial interaction with valuable partners, as well as a negative impact of the cost of managing relationships. However, negative impacts of logistical costs and, surprisingly, the role of government policy on resilience are also identified. Implications for research and policy are discussed.

Keywords:

• Resilience
• small firms
• remote islands
• stakeholder theory
• sustainable economic development
• St Helena

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 These include organizational responses to external threats, organizational reliability, employee strengths, and the adaptability of business models and design principles of supply chain resilience (Linnenluecke, 2017).

2 In this vein, the definition we use is “the capacity for an enterprise to survive, adapt, and grow in the face of turbulent change” (Fiksel, 2006, p. 16).

3 It is noteworthy that a discourse of CRCs is not visible in the original 2012 SEDP for St Helena.

4 Based on a review of 339 research works between 1977 and 2014.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Christopher Williams

Christopher Williams has a B.Sc (Hons) degree from Durham University, an MBA from the Open University Business School and a Ph.D in International Management from University of London. His research interests include innovation in international firms, knowledge transfer, national innovation systems and resilience.

Jacqueline Jing You

Jacqueline Jing You is a doctoral researcher at Durham University Business School. Her research interests include organizational resilience and disruption, inter-organizational relationships and organizational ecosystems. She holds degrees from the University of Shanghai Science and Technology and the University of St Andrews.

Kirsty Joshua

Kirsty Joshua is a St Helenian from the remote Island of St Helena in the South Atlantic Ocean. She holds an MBA from Durham University Business School. Her research focuses on innovation, strategy and economic and sustainable development within islands. Her general research interest is to contribute to the knowledge of small remote islands.