How the Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises enhance resilience in Taiwan

COVID-19 pandemic began from January 2020 and it had a huge effect on the world’s economy. The pandemic has made a lot of enterprises suffer, while these enterprises often play a substantial role in assisting the nation. The result of that is major losses in declining consumption and recession due to the lockdown, and this has caused a significant contraction to the economic activity. This was a longterm global trend that was observed in numerous countries, however, this issue was only a temporary occurrence in Taiwan’s manufacturing industries, as the impact of contracted economic activity was soon returned to normal operations. This observation has shown to be in the Taiwan's manufacturing industries, where not only large companies in the IT and semiconductor industries, but also the small and medium-sized enterprises. This study focuses on the small and medium-sized manufacturing industries in Taiwan and examines how the entrepreneurs respond and react to the COVID 19 restriction and the pandemic crisis. This study used a qualitative narrative approach on three entrepreneurs came from different companies and the approach was developed based on the previous research. The result has showed how they demonstrated resilience under uncertain pandemic restriction and how they tried to overcome the pandemic crisis. The summarized results of this study were shown in the following four points. (1) Entrepreneurs were able to make a quick decision to withdraw from investments that did not bring profit to their company when facing a crisis. (2) Entrepreneurs showed a highly flexibility skills when responding to changes towards different circumstances and highly developed problem-solving ability. (3) Entrepreneurs were able to create mechanism for division of labor through mutual complementation with others in a human network. (4) Entrepreneurs' desire to grow and their desire is the factor in overcoming crises.