Abstract
This study attempts to identify the roles of different coping strategies (pivoting and persevering) and entrepreneurial orientation that could interact and affect SMEs’ financial performance in the context of a sudden and pervasive external crisis. For this purpose, we applied asymmetric configurational theorizing and methods. The fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis was applied to a dataset combining survey results and financial reports of 201 Finnish SMEs. Our analysis showed that, as a response to the COVID-19 crisis, it was more common to apply pivoting than the perseverance strategy. Entrepreneurial orientation was positively related to pivoting, growth, and subjective performance but not related to profitability. Firms that had faced more problems tended to apply the perseverance strategy, and their financial performance was weaker. We also found combinations of factors that led to poor performance as non-entrepreneurial firms that faced major problems consistently performed poorly despite the coping strategies employed. In conclusion, we argue that different types of coping strategies are powerful and effective in different intensities of crises experienced by SMEs, but it is critical to match the correct coping strategy with the firm’s strategic orientation.