How Dynamic Capabilities Facilitates Thriving Versus Reviving Resilience in Social Enterprises

The purpose of our study is to identify how dynamic capabilities facilitate the resilience of social enterprises facing environmental turbulence, namely pandemic and prolonged lockdowns in a developing country. We employ an inductive study of 18 social enterprises in India and propose that confluence of the social entrepreneur (the person), social entrepreneurship (the process), and dynamic capabilities – regenerative and renewing – drive resilience. We delve deeper and find that resilience can be categorized as thriving or reviving, based on the expected growth trajectory by these enterprises in near future, namely up to the next financial year. We link the regenerative capabilities to thriving resilience while renewing capabilities to reviving resilience. We further raise a pointer towards a probable explanation for such divergence. Finally, we draw some practical implications that dynamic capabilities play in creating resilient social enterprises.