Continuous improvement and organizational resilience: The role of digital maturity in small and medium-sized enterprise

This paper aims to explore the relationship between continuous improvement (CI), organizational resilience (OR), and the moderating influence of digital maturity (DM) within SMEs by analyzing if and to what extent SMEs’ DM contributes to continuously improving to recover from disruptions. A moderated hierarchical regression is adopted to capture evidence from 133 Italian SMEs belonging to the textile industry. Findings reveal that people and strategy positively affects the reactive OR with the moderation of the digital intensity by paving the way to an operational excellence. Conversely, culture and top management play a crucial role in the proactive resilience of SMEs with the moderation of transformation management intensity by creating the ideal conditions for an organizational excellence. The study identifies new critical success factors (CSFs) that directly and indirectly influence the company's ability to face the crises. Moreover, CI and DM are conceptualized as organizational capabilities that not only constitute resilience but also serve as prerequisites for its cultivation. Thus, resilience can be perceived as a meta-capability, herein deconstructed into its constituent elements having a cognitive and behavioral nature.