Resilience and Entrepreneurial Decision-Making: The Heterogeneity of Digital Start-Ups in Italy

The Covid-19 pandemic caused a disruptive crisis all over the world. Its repercussion are particularly salient when thinking of start-ups and ventures that in their infancy, therefore the investigation of their resilient capacity is of primary importance for entrepreneurship scholars. Innovative and digital start-ups play an important role for economic and employment growth through the exploration of new market opportunities, they employ innovation in order to be resilient and react to crises. Despite the increasing attention of researchers on decision-making processes, little is known about the motives guiding those reactions. Understanding how entrepreneurs make decisions is crucial for to be successful. However, many factors influence decision-making processes, making them complex to analyse. This study explores which factors have influenced four reactions of digital start-ups in Emilia-Romagna during Covid-19. By submitting a survey to those start-ups this research analyses 158 actors, their responses and characteristics. The selected model to explain the complex causality of the research is fsQCA, which is the most appropriate to combine the psychological and educational decision-making factors for the occurrence of each reaction. Results show four types of decision-makers, prudent, organized, flexible and balanced for the decisions related to Covid-19 resilience.