Social Media and Organizational Resilience in ICT SMEs: A Dynamic Capabilities Perspective

Foundational Level: Communication and Platform Diversification

A foundational level emerged in five of the 14 organizations (35.7%), primarily among firms whose SM use remained reactive and operationally driven. This level centered on SM adoption for internal communication with employees and external communication with customers, suppliers, and partners. Predominant platforms included WhatsApp for informal messaging, Zoom and Microsoft Teams for video calls, and Facebook for external communication. Telegram channels and groups were used for real-time coordination and broad content distribution, complementing WhatsApp’s role in maintaining operational continuity during the crisis.

Intermediate Level: Marketing and Relationship Management Strategies

An intermediate level emerged in seven of the 14 organizations (50%), characterized by greater strategic intentionality in deploying SM for digital marketing, S-CRM, and community building. Key platforms included LinkedIn for professional networking, Instagram for visual brand communication, and Twitter for direct customer interaction. Telegram was used for structured community engagement and large-scale content distribution, extending its role beyond basic messaging. Firms at this level adapted their business strategies by shifting promotional efforts to digital channels and maintaining customer proximity during the crisis.

Advanced Level: Knowledge Management and Innovation

An advanced level emerged in two of the 14 organizations (14.3%), both characterized by a culture of experimentation, systematic documentation, and full integration of SM into knowledge management and collaborative innovation. Key platforms included Slack for internal collaboration, Google Workspace and Microsoft Teams for shared document management, and specialized LinkedIn groups for knowledge exchange. These organizations used SM to access external expertise, coordinate agile responses, and capture lessons learned. Platforms varied by purpose: LinkedIn groups for professional networking, Discord servers for technical collaboration, and sector-specific forums for regulatory updates.

Framework for Organizational Resilience Dimensions

Thematic analysis identified six functional dimensions through which SM platforms contributed to OR. These dimensions did not operate in isolation; they were deployed in varying combinations depending on the firm’s level of sophistication. Table 3 provides an overview of these dimensions, their associated platforms, and the observed contributions. The following sections present empirical evidence for each dimension, drawing on interview excerpts.

All interviews were conducted in Spanish (coded AET01–AET14) and subsequently translated by the authors. To ensure translation accuracy, excerpts underwent iterative review prioritizing preservation of original semantic content, idiomatic specificity, and contextual meaning over literal correspondence—a procedure aligned with established practices in qualitative cross-linguistic research. The next section presents the key themes identified, illustrated with participants’ verbatim accounts.

Organizational Communication

Beyond marketing, organizations reported intensive reliance on SM platforms to replicate—and in many cases, optimize—traditional face-to-face dynamics. This shift represented not merely a substitute for physical presence but a fundamental reconfiguration of collaborative workflows. As one institutional manager reflected: “Meetings, collaborative decision-making—everything required adaptation. Previously, voting meant simply raising hands. Now we needed digital alternatives for these interactions and consensus-building. Interestingly, the process became more efficient” (AET05, Manager, Institution).

This excerpt illustrates how basic-level SM adoption, initially a reactive response to operational necessity, generated unexpected efficiency gains. The transition from synchronous physical presence to hybrid digital interaction (integrating video conferencing with persistent messaging threads) created documented decision trails and improved information flow across teams. This pattern was observed across multiple cases, suggesting that even foundational tools can foster new work routines when deployed during crisis-induced experimentation.

Digital Marketing

Open coding revealed digital marketing as a prominent dimension, reflecting the accelerated migration of promotional activities from physical channels to digital platforms. This pattern emerged most clearly in organizations at the foundational level, which recognized the crisis as a catalyst to strengthen their digital presence. Participants described a deliberate evolution in their outreach strategies as they observed shifts in user behavior; for instance, one Director noted:

Particularly on Facebook, reaching the target market has become increasingly difficult. I believe [the organization] recognized this shift, which is why they have scaled back on those networks. Instead, they are pivoting toward other digital tools and platforms that […] are gaining traction elsewhere (AET09, Director, Institution).

Following this pivot, organizations implemented targeted campaigns on platforms such as Instagram and LinkedIn to maintain brand visibility and facilitate B2B communication. By generating high-value content—including tutorials, success stories, and webinars—firms that previously relied on in-person trade shows transitioned to virtual events, often achieving broader geographic reach and significant cost reductions. Campaigns were deployed across multiple platforms: Facebook and Instagram for brand visibility, LinkedIn for business to business (B2B) communication and client acquisition, and Twitter/X for real-time engagement. This dimension contributed to maintaining commercial activity and identifying new market opportunities, ultimately establishing sustainable post-pandemic communication channels.

Social Customer Relationship Management

Analysis identified a transition from unidirectional broadcasting to S-CRM, characterized by bidirectional interactions that enabled a more detailed understanding of customer needs and behaviors. This pattern distinguished organizations that began to treat customer input as a source of information for product adjustments. As one director explained:

We don’t have a [standard] CRM combined with a task manager, so we customize our own. This is crucial because it allows for precise customer tracking. We receive a high volume of requests via SM, and this system enables systematic follow-up (AET08, Director, Company).

This narrative reflects how firms used SM-integrated systems to consolidate fragmented communication—from WhatsApp, Facebook, and Instagram—into unified workflows. During the pandemic, increased demand for rapid digital responses pressured firms to professionalize these interactions, moving them beyond ad-hoc replies toward systematic relationship management. By maintaining customer proximity through digital channels when physical touchpoints were disrupted, firms using S-CRM were able to sustain commercial activity during the crisis.

Digital Communities and Collaboration Networks

A distinctive dimension emerged in the use of SM to cultivate digital communities and collaborative networks. These networks included partners, suppliers, and even competitors in joint initiatives. This pattern was particularly evident among firms that viewed business networks as sources of complementary resources. As one director noted:

There are groups that coalesce in a sort of virtual [private enclave], and through them, new knowledge, relationships, and customer leads are generated. This is the current shift in the sector; organizations are opening up to intense interaction through these digital networks (AET04, Director, Company).

During the pandemic, this collaborative dynamic materialized in specialized communities on platforms such as Slack and LinkedIn. A recurring observation was the ICT cluster’s transition to virtual meetings, which increased participation rates compared to previous face-to-face gatherings and enabled more inclusive exchange of experiences. Platform use varied by purpose: LinkedIn groups supported professional networking and business development; Discord servers facilitated technical discussions and informal knowledge exchange; Twitter/X enabled real-time industry conversations; and sector-specific forums provided regulatory updates and market intelligence.

Knowledge Management

Analysis identified an advanced pattern of SM use for knowledge management, characterized by systematic capture, codification, and storage of both explicit and tacit knowledge. This pattern was observed in organizations that had developed routines for continuous learning and formal documentation practices. As one director described:

Social networks serve as a conduit for hosting events and generating an information database that can be consulted later. Ultimately, this creates a repository of learning and knowledge that becomes a strategic asset for the organization (AET09, Director, Institution).

Beyond simple communication, organizations implemented internal wikis and structured repositories (e.g., within Slack or Microsoft Teams) to document technical solutions and “lessons learned.” The pandemic-induced shift to remote work accelerated this formalization; processes previously transmitted through informal, in-person interactions were transformed into documented digital trails. This dimension contributed to OR by enabling rapid access to problem-solving data and by converting individual experience into collective knowledge assets that could be consulted in future disruptions.

Collaborative Innovation

The most advanced dimension to emerge was the use of SM for collaborative development and experimentation with external actors. This pattern involved co-creating solutions and iterating business models in partnership with customers, suppliers, and even competitors. Observed in organizations with a culture of openness to external input, this dimension was exemplified by one institutional leader:

We listen intensely to social networks to drive development. For instance, we have an ERP for SMEs, and we have already engineered new products based on [insights gathered from] social networks. We developed applications for our ERP to ‘catch’ ads: when a user posts ‘I need a sales system,’ the system identifies the lead and notifies the relevant parties (AET11, President, Institution).

Beyond lead generation, this proactive engagement materialized in open webinars and digital hackathons where organizations invited both customers and non-customers to discuss pain points, effectively validating service demand before full-scale development. Tech start-ups, in particular, used dedicated groups on Facebook and Instagram as low-fidelity prototyping environments, gathering real-time feedback that accelerated product adjustments.

With respect to resilience outcomes, Collaborative Innovation constituted the hallmark of the advanced level. It appeared to support adaptive transformation by facilitating the continuous renewal of value propositions and the exploration of emerging opportunities. By leveraging ecosystem for co-creation, firms moved beyond mere survival and utilized crisis as springboard for business model innovation and long-term competitive evolution. After identifying and describing the operational mechanisms through which SM contributed to OR, selective coding consolidated the emerging theory into a proposed conceptual framework.

Figure 1 represents digital evolution model for OR (SM → DC → OR), illustrating how six dimensions of strategic use of SM operate as enablers of DC that strengthen three stages of OR process. Dotted lines indicate specific causal connections between dimensions and DC, and critical connections are highlighted with thick lines. Sidebar represents three empirically identified levels of organizational evolution.

Overview of Identified Dimensions

Table 3 summarizes six identified dimensions of SM use for OR, organized according to level of organizational evolution, predominant digital platforms, and specific contribution to temporal stages of OR (see Figure 1).

In addition, platform examples showed predominant uses per maturity level; detailed platform-dimension mappings are provided in Table 3A.

Across the six dimensions, three cross-cutting patterns emerged: synergistic integration of dimensions, sequential digital maturity progression, and superior resilience outcomes in advanced-level organizations — patterns that the following section interprets through the DC lens.

Sensing: Amplifying Anticipatory Capabilities

As established in the literature review, sensing capabilities enable anticipation through the identification and interpretation of environmental signals. SM platforms facilitate the cultivation of social capital across three dimensions that converge to activate sensing.

Digital communities function as distributed intelligence networks that enhance structural and cognitive capital. By participating in industry-specific LinkedIn groups and Slack channels, SMEs gain access to non-redundant information—novel knowledge unavailable through internal teams. Our findings revealed that ICT cluster participants actively engaged in these communities detected pandemic-related market shifts earlier than isolated peers. Field observations and informal conversations during site visits suggested that digitally embedded firms notably shortened the latency between sensing a disruption and seizing adaptive opportunities—a pattern consistently noted across multiple firms. This temporal advantage illustrates how digital communities compress detection windows, transforming SM from a passive information channel into an active sensing infrastructure.

S-CRM strengthens relational capital by enabling continuous monitoring of customer needs. Unlike periodic surveys, SM-facilitated interactions generate real-time feedback; this allowed firms to detect demand shifts for remote collaboration tools within days of lockdown announcements. By professionalizing digital listening, organizations institutionalize the detection of weak market signals, transforming customer relationships into strategic sensing assets. This mechanism explains how resource-constrained SMEs can achieve environmental scanning capabilities that rival those of larger corporations.

Knowledge Management facilitates the absorption of external knowledge to bolster cognitive capital. Advanced organizations curated specialized sources through RSS feeds and Slack integrations, transforming raw information into strategic intelligence necessary for identifying disruptive signals. The causal mechanism appears to operate by reducing information access costs and compressing detection windows. Crucially, SM-enabled social capital appeared to function as a critical bridging mechanism for resource-constrained SMEs, providing structural ties to reach information, cognitive resources to interpret it, and relational trust to act upon it.

The activation of sensing capabilities through SM is contingent upon the conversion of social capital into strategic assets. While structural capital (connectivity) facilitates the detection of environmental signals, it is the cognitive dimension—manifested through shared digital narratives and common interpretative frameworks—that enables effective interpretation. Within digital communities, this cognitive capital acts as a sense-making mechanism that reduces ambiguity, allowing SMEs to synchronize collective responses. Thus, SM dimensions do not automatically generate sensing capabilities; they appear to do so when cognitive social capital translates raw connectivity into actionable intelligence.

Seizing: Orchestrating Resources Under Pressure

The transition from sensing to seizing—mobilizing resources to address detected opportunities or threats—was supported by SM dimensions that facilitated rapid coordination and decision-making.

Organizational communication platforms (WhatsApp, Microsoft Teams) exemplified this mechanism. As documented in the findings, the shift from synchronous physical presence to hybrid digital interaction created documented decision trails and improved information flow. This seemingly basic adaptation represents the activation of seizing capabilities: the ability to rapidly reconfigure coordination routines in response to environmental shocks.

Digital communities also contributed to seizing by providing access to complementary resources. When physical supply chains were disrupted, firms used sector-specific forums and Slack channels to identify alternative suppliers, share logistical solutions, and coordinate joint responses. This peer-to-peer resource orchestration illustrates how relational capital—trust-based digital networks—lowers the friction inherent in rapid resource mobilization during crises.

The intermediate-level practices documented in S-CRM and digital marketing further illustrate seizing activation. By maintaining customer proximity through digital channels when physical touchpoints were severed, firms preserved commercial flows and adapted their value propositions. This required not only detecting changing customer needs (sensing) but also rapidly reconfiguring marketing and sales processes to address them—a clear manifestation of seizing capabilities.

Transforming: Institutionalizing Learning for Renewal

The transforming capability—reconfiguring organizational structures and routines for long-term adaptation—was activated primarily by advanced dimensions: knowledge management and collaborative innovation.

Knowledge management practices appeared to transform individual expertise into collective assets. Organizations that implemented internal wikis, structured repositories, and systematic documentation of “lessons learned” appeared to convert crisis-induced adaptations into organizational memory. This process suggests that effective crisis responses need not remain isolated events but may become progressively embedded in the firm’s long-term operational routines. The pandemic-induced shift to remote work catalyzed this formalization, as processes previously transmitted through informal, in-person interactions were transformed into documented digital trails. This represents the essence of transforming: converting temporary adaptations into permanent capabilities.

Collaborative innovation enabled experimentation and co-creation with external actors. By leveraging SM platforms for virtual hackathons and open webinars, organizations co-designed service adaptations with customers. Tech start-ups used dedicated SM groups as low-fidelity prototyping environments, gathering real-time feedback that accelerated product iterations. This mechanism appears to reduce barriers to open innovation and may accelerate learning cycles, potentially creating opportunities for firms to adapt or pivot their business models and to establish innovation routines that persist beyond the crisis.

Our findings reveal a clear “maturity gap”: advanced-level organizations utilized these SM-enabled assets for structural reconfiguration, whereas foundational-level organizations remained limited to incremental, tactical adjustments. This gap illustrates that transforming capacity is not automatically conferred by technology adoption; it requires prior investment in sensing and seizing infrastructures, as well as a culture that values systematic learning.

The Moderating Role of Context: Insights from Field Observations

While not the central analytical focus, field observations during site visits reinforced interviewees’ accounts of operational disruption and highlighted the relevance of technological developments in enabling continuity throughout the crisis. The identified SME-resilience relationship is shaped by contextual factors. Organizational size has ambivalent effects: SMEs face resource constraints that shape investment priorities, yet their structural agility—flatter hierarchies and greater flexibility for experimentation—confers distinct advantages.

SM platforms function as leveling mechanisms that mitigate the structural disadvantages of resource-constrained SMEs. By providing enterprise-grade communication and marketing tools at marginal costs, these platforms dissolve entry barriers historically favoring capital-intensive corporations. This democratization allows SMEs to achieve ‘scale without mass,’ leveraging cloud-based architectures to build complex capabilities without substantial investment.

Within the Guadalajara ICT ecosystem, these effects are magnified by the concentration of firms, a culture conducive to digital adoption, the availability of digitally skilled talent, and institutions that deliver complementary resources. This environment allowed SMEs in this sector to demonstrate greater sophistication in their resilience compared to firms in traditional sectors or less developed regions. Consequently, SM-facilitated resilience acts as a strategic equalizer, enabling smaller firms to orchestrate resources and respond to shocks with operational agility that rivals larger competitors—provided the organization possesses the necessary absorptive capacity (see Literature Review). Viewed through the lens of these contextual moderators, the theoretical contributions come into sharper relief, suggesting that while technology is accessible, the ecosystemic and internal capacities remain the ultimate boundary conditions for generalizability.

Theoretical Contributions: Bridging the Causal Mechanism Gap

Prior research has established that SM matters for OR but has largely left unexplained how and when it matters. Addressing this gap, we transition from correlational accounts to a mechanism-based explanation, advancing OR research across three critical frontiers.

First, we move beyond dimensional aggregation. While prior research often treats SM as a unitary construct (Giordani et al., 2023) or bundles it with broader ICT indices (Xie et al., 2022), we provide functional granularity. By disaggregating SM into six dimensions—Organizational Communication, Digital Marketing, S-CRM, Digital Communities, Knowledge Management, and Collaborative Innovation—we specify that foundational dimensions were primarily associated with the activation of sensing and seizing capabilities—supporting anticipation and operational coping—while advanced dimensions appeared to function as higher-order DC, facilitating transforming processes oriented toward long-term adaptation through institutionalized learning.

Second, we provide temporal-capability mapping. Unlike cross-sectional studies that treat resilience as a static outcome, our integration of Duchek’s (2020) framework reveals how SM practices unfold sequentially. We observe that SM-activated sensing appears to enable the anticipation stage, seizing seems to facilitate the coping stage, and transforming appears associated with adaptation as the terminal resilience stage. This addresses the long-standing call for process-oriented research that captures how DC activate across specific crisis phases (Williams et al., 2017).

Third, we open the micro-foundational ‘black box’ of OR by specifying how social capital activates sensing, seizing, and transforming capabilities. While existing literature identifies social capital as a mediator (Ozanne et al., 2022), it often leaves the transition from ‘social ties’ to specific resilience stages underspecified. Our model bridges this gap by proposing that SM-enabled social capital functions, within this empirical context, as the substrate through which sensing, seizing, and transforming DC are progressively activated.

By reconciling DC with temporal resilience, this study shifts the discourse from documenting if SM helps to explaining how, when, and through which specific pathways it fosters organizational longevity and adaptive capacity.

A Multi-Level Architecture of Organizational Resilience

The following propositions synthesize both the functional contributions of SM practices (RQ1) and the sequential activation of sensing, seizing, and transforming capabilities (RQ2), formalizing the link between digital dimensions and resilience stages.

Proposition on Functional Heterogeneity of SM Dimensions

The contribution of SM to OR operates through six functionally distinct dimensions that appear to activate specific DC across the resilience cycle. These effects reflect an observed three-fold pattern: (1) sensing capabilities are associated with relational and market-intelligence dimensions (e.g., S-CRM) in enabling anticipation; (2) seizing capabilities are linked to organizational communication (foundational level) in sustaining operational coping; and (3) transforming capabilities are associated with advanced knowledge-integration dimensions (advanced level) in facilitating adaptive renewal. Strategies that bypass foundational maturity to invest directly in advanced dimensions may yield suboptimal resilience returns, as higher-order transforming appears to depend on the cumulative nature of the absorptive capacity built in earlier stages.

Proposition on Digital Maturity as a Conditioning Trajectory

The relationship between SM and OR appears to follow a nonlinear, path-dependent trajectory moderated by accumulated digital maturity. Advanced adopters demonstrate superior anticipation and adaptation, consistent with the observation that prior investments institutionalize the absorptive capacity needed to process complex environmental signals. This cumulative advantage suggests a strategic gap: foundational-level firms—particularly those in ecosystems with low institutional support—may not replicate resilience outcomes through technology adoption alone without first internalizing the intermediate sensing substrates provided by S-CRM and digital community-building.

Proposition on Sequential Patterning of DC Activation

Within the observed sample, the relationship between SM and OR followed a consistent sequential pattern in which sensing infrastructures appeared to precede seizing mobilization, which in turn appeared to function as a precondition for effective transforming reconfiguration. This observed sequentiality may constitute a characteristic pathway under conditions of high environmental uncertainty, as advanced SM dimensions were observationally associated with limited transforming outcomes in the absence of consolidated sensing mechanisms. This pattern suggests a potential ‘maturity threshold’ where incremental technological investment may not translate into enhanced resilience in cases where the underlying sequential development of DC is not observed. Future research employing longitudinal and cross-sectoral designs is warranted to assess whether this sequence constitutes a generalizable structural condition or a context-specific trajectory.

These six functionally distinct dimensions constitute a meso-level construct that integrates sensing, seizing, and transforming processes across the resilience cycle, bridging micro-level routines with organizational-level resilience capabilities—and providing the framework’s operational foundation for the practical implications developed in the following section.

Implications for SME Managers, Policymakers, and Platform Providers

This framework offers actionable pathways for strategic decision-making. Operationally, SME managers should prioritize investment in S-CRM platforms and digital community engagement to establish the sensing substrate necessary before committing to complex knowledge management infrastructure.

A key implication for SMEs operating within high-density ICT ecosystems comparable to Guadalajara—and, by cautious extension, for ecosystems in early consolidation stages seeking to develop analogous institutional infrastructure—concerns the deliberate cultivation of ecosystem density through active participation in virtual cross-regional communities. Where proximate institutional intermediaries are absent or underdeveloped, platform-mediated collaboration may partially compensate by constructing the relational infrastructure that mature clusters possess organically, though the effectiveness of this mechanism under conditions of lower absorptive capacity remains an empirical question requiring systematic investigation. The path-dependent nature of SM-OR maturity defines a strategic frontier rather than a deterministic constraint: managers should identify their firm’s current maturity threshold and prioritize investments that resolve foundational bottlenecks before advancing to higher-order capability development.

For policymakers – particularly in high-density, institutionally supported Latin American high-tech ecosystems that exhibit conditions analogous to Guadalajara’s GMA (e.g., concentration of digital talent, active intermediary institutions, and pre-existing absorptive capacity) – this implies redirecting support from hardware infrastructure toward capability-building programs that foster digital community formation, peer learning networks, and strategic technology integration. In the Guadalajara context, this would mean strengthening the bridging roles already played by institutions such as IJALTI and COECYTJAL, scaling their intermediation capacity beyond their current reach. For similar ecosystems in early consolidation stages that already show signs of emerging institutional density (e.g., the presence of sectoral associations, initial digital talent pools, or nascent intermediary support), this implication applies only by cautious extension – acknowledging that the effectiveness of synthetic density mechanisms in lower-absorptive-capacity contexts remains an empirical question.

Platform providers and ecosystem managers should focus on engineering modular, interoperable environments that minimize coordination overhead and facilitate shared access to complementary resources for resource-constrained firms. Implementing these targeted interventions ensures that digital adoption transcends basic functional use to become an institutionalized driver of organizational endurance.

Boundary Conditions and Future Research Directions

While the framework provides a robust theoretical architecture for OR, its boundary conditions delineate fertile ground for future inquiry. First, as a GT study, our findings prioritize analytical over statistical generalization. Future research should employ longitudinal designs and structural equation modeling to test the proposed causal pathways across representative samples, mitigating concerns of reverse causality and selection effects.

Second, the framework’s scope is bounded by ecosystem characteristics. The specific context of Guadalajara’s high-tech ecosystem—a high-density environment with active institutional intermediaries—suggests that digital literacy and ecosystem density may act as key moderators. Systematic replications are needed to assess their operation in traditional sectors (e.g., manufacturing, retail) and in geographically isolated firms with lower absorptive capacity. Extending the framework across Latin America’s polycentric innovation landscape—from Brazil’s São Paulo to Mexico’s Monterrey and to smaller emerging ecosystems—will require accounting for heterogeneity in institutional support intensity and digital maturity, factors that may recalibrate the thresholds for institutionalizing SM dimensions as higher-order DC.

Crucially, the model’s validity is also bounded by the nature of the crisis itself. Constructed from pandemic-induced disruptions—characterized by abrupt onset, universal scope, and high ambiguity—the framework’s sequential logic of sensing, seizing, and transforming may not generalize to crises with different temporal or structural profiles. Future research should test whether the same capability ordering holds for slow-onset disruptions such as financial recessions, or for technically specific shocks such as cyberattacks, where the locus of sensing and seizing may differ substantively.

Third, the model’s organizational-level focus constitutes a boundary condition that brackets individual agency. Future research should bridge micro and macro levels by adopting a multilevel lens to examine micro-foundations—including leadership styles, employee technology anxiety, and individual digital competencies—and their role in shaping advanced practices. Investigating these human-technological interfaces would provide a more holistic understanding of crisis management.

Finally, while the coding process followed a rigorous three-phase GT approach, it did not include inter-coder reliability metrics or formal member checking. To mitigate this limitation, an audit trail was maintained throughout the ATLAS.ti analysis to ensure internal consistency and reflexive alignment between the empirical data and the emerging conceptual categories.