Enhancing Competitiveness of Small Medium-sized Enterprises during the Post-Pandemic through Intellectual Capital and Technology Capabilities

Abstract

Companies in developing countries need to make small and medium-sized businesses more competitive in this age of post-pandemic because these businesses make up more than half of a country’s gross domestic product. Reflecting on the pandemic, the uncertainties and disruption further exacerbated the challenges and agility of small and medium-sized enterprises. Some of the problems these businesses still face today are speed, complexity, new ideas and sheer size of technology. The primary objective of this research is to investigate the essentiality of intellectual capital (IC) and technology capabilities in attaining strategic agility (SA) for competitive viability while also encouraging the resilience of small- and medium-sized firms in the context of after pandemic. The methodology of this study is quantitative, with administration of a survey spanned a duration of 8 months, targeting a sample of 188 small and medium-sized enterprises from Indonesia that fulfilled the criteria established for this study. The study utilized partial least squares structural equation modelling to empirically investigate and assess the hypotheses. The outcomes of this study indicate that both constructs have a significant impact on SA, which in turn has a substantial effect on competitiveness. The results derived from the analysis of the importance-performance matrix had business implications that small and medium-sized enterprises should place greater emphasis on improving the performance of their IC to strengthen their SA and eventually augment their competitiveness.