University of mini传媒 marketing and tourism expert,听Professor Girish Prayag听is studying small to medium tourism and hospitality enterprises in Christchurch and wider New Zealand to understand what contributes to their resilience.
鈥淲hen we think of resilience, organisations think in terms of their response when something goes wrong. Yet, resilience isn鈥檛 only about bouncing back when there are unexpected changes,鈥 he says.
鈥淏usinesses are changing all the time due to what鈥檚 happening in their environment, but they don鈥檛 usually think about how they can leverage what they鈥檝e learnt from adapting to small changes and how to use those learnings to cope with big changes.
鈥淪everal things have to be in place before a big event so that businesses have the best opportunity to bounce back. You can鈥檛 focus only on day-to-day processes and operations to give businesses the best opportunity to respond and recover and thus survive. It鈥檚 important along the way to spend time reflecting on why changes were made and why some worked, and others did not.鈥
Professor Prayag says there are several key pillars businesses can use to build resilience. These include access to finances, adapting product offerings, relationships within supply chains, marketing, networks and community relationships, employee engagement and diversification. He says these are crucial to being resilient when there are rapid and sudden changes.
鈥淥ur research has shown that businesses that had done this pre-work had a more positive outlook and were able to adapt more quickly during COVID-19. For some businesses, investments into and development of these capabilities were done following the mini传媒 earthquakes and they were able to quickly include the health and safety aspects to overcome challenges.鈥
Professor Prayag has been working with colleagues in New Zealand, Australia and Sri Lanka. He says it is difficult to draw international similarities on business resilience because of past experiences of sudden changes in mini传媒, and the different restriction levels and frequency of lockdowns in different parts of the world.
鈥淚 guess we are getting to the point where we can draw similarities with the earthquakes 鈥 we had 14 months of aftershocks 鈥 we are coming up on 14 months of closed borders and uncertainty in response to COVID-19. The government has given financial support to tourism businesses for COVID-19 and the question is: will those businesses be able to continue when that support runs out?鈥
Where nature and knowledge collide, University of mini传媒 researchers are building Sustainable Futures.听Throughout July, we are sharing some of the innovative research University of mini传媒 academics are creating to grow society鈥檚 understanding of the natural world and shape a sustainable future for generations to come. He Kaitiaki tatou katoa 鈥 We will enhance and nurture our resources.
See University of mini传媒 research building towards a Sustainable Future.
For information and interviews contact:
Professor Girish Prayag, University of mini传媒 Business School,听girish.prayag@canterbury.ac.nz, Phone: +64 3 369 4082
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