From Disruption to Resilience: Post-COVID-19 Qualitative Look at Karachi Businesses

Abstract

The lessons that management has learned from the Covid-19 calamity are still being revealed. The COVID-19 pandemic's impact on business resilience is still unfolding. This study explores how Karachi-based companies adapted using a qualitative approach. Semi-structured interviews with representatives from eleven diverse organizations revealed both internal and external transformations, encompassing strategic and operational changes. These adaptations demonstrate how businesses can build three-dimensional organizational resilience to navigate unforeseen disruptions. The objective of this study is to showcase the resilience mechanisms and tactics that Karachi-based companies have implemented in response to these changes. The researchers took an inductive stance. Semi-structured interviews were employed to gather data from a sample of eleven organizations spanning different industries, selected based on their potential for profit. The manual examination of the semi-formatted thematic content of the gathered data reveals that the COVID-19 epidemic has caused both internal and external change, with both an operational and a strategic component. Organizational change is a process of the organization adapting to changes in the external and internal environment as well as to a momentary state that is prevalent. This leads to the development of three-dimensional organizational resilience and/or the capture of positive externalities. It is a process by which the organization adjusts to changes in both the internal and external environments, as well as to the current situation. It is an evolution as opposed to a revolution. As far as limitations are concerned, it is based on interviews while future researchers are required to apply triangulation to get a better understanding and draw useful conclusions.