The resilience of Italian social enterprises led by women during systemic crises: empirical investigation at the time of COVID-19

The spread of COVID-19 and the consequent restrictive measures that became necessary in the first months of 2020 hit humanity hard. The profound crisis that ensued forced scholars to investigate various issues, including the resilience and recovery capacity of the companies. The meaning of resilience is much broader than simple adaptation; it encompasses resistance, elasticity, and flexibility, the ability to regain lost form, struggle and combat, fortitude and courage, will and determination, recovery and relaunch, and finally, readjustment. From this point of view, only a few studies focus on the resilience capacity of social enterprises (SEs). SEs are private organizations whose hybrid nature places them between profit-oriented enterprises and philanthropic bodies. Even less attention is paid to the impact that a women’s management of SEs can have on their resilience capacity. This contribution aims to fill the gap and analyze the ability of Italian SEs to be anti-cyclical and resilient during times of crisis, focusing the analysis on those runs by women or in which women play an important managerial role. A qualitative methodology based on multiple case studies will be used to comply with the paper’s aim. A homogeneous sample of companies will be analyzed by size (SMEs) and ATECO code (catering sector). The catering sector was chosen as it represents one of the most affected during the pandemic. The sample comprises profit-oriented companies and SEs (no-profit-oriented). The data will be taken from the Aida Bureau van Dijk™ database, relating to 2016–2020, but focus on 2019–2020 to discover crisis impact. The comparison between 51 profit enterprises and 20 SEs demonstrates the anticyclical nature of SEs and resilience to systemic crises. At this stage, no peculiar differences emerge between SEs led by women or men. The contribution of our research is twofold. On the one hand, it contributes to the resilience studies focusing on the role played by the SEs. On the other hand, this paper extends research on gender studies applied to non-profit management by increasing the analyses focusing on women’s leadership and the impacts they achieve in terms of economic and social performance, including employment. Our results strive for new lines of research and may push scholars to analyze in depth the differences in male and female management in social enterprises.