The promotion of business resilience in wartime and post-war recovery

The resilience of businesses facing wartime risks is the cornerstone of the country’s resilience in a protracted full-scale war. Its strength in the medium- and the long run is based on the adaptive capacity of businesses to wartime challenges, combined with their inclusion in economic turnover. The paper examines the path toward resilience by focusing on macro-level policies, enhancing the institutional framework for businesses to network and supporting the internationalisation of businesses. The suggested policies should be accounted for in the agenda of international support of Ukraine.

The initial stage of a full-scale war has shown the capacity of a large part of Ukrainian entrepreneurs to withstand the war-generated threats and risks. After the first shocking months, businesses started to recover, at least in the territories not involved in active combating. Thus, developed entrepreneurship is one of the anchors of Ukraine’s resilience to aggression.

Meanwhile, this initial recovery has been based chiefly on exhausting the pre-war accumulated reserves and restoring usual business models, where business-as-usual was still possible, based on available resources and market preferences. However, the ability of businesses to maintain resilience over the long term during an extended war is heavily dependent on their ability to recover from losses caused by the war, overcome obstacles and risks to activities, and adapt business models to new challenges and changing markets.

The problems accumulated during the months of the active war are systemic and often reach beyond the individual strengths to handle them. While the initial flexibility was somewhat based on the endogenous potential of businesses, medium- and long-term resilience needs additional coordinative and promotive actions to reach the synergy of adaptive capacities of single companies.

Read more in the policy brief below.