Business sustainability under prolonged instability : business owners in the Gaza strip

Abstract

Business sustainability has become one of the most strategic issues for leaders and business owners in the world. This research studies the challenge of prolonged instability facing business owners to sustain their business. This situation of prolonged instability is occurring in the Gaza Strip. Prolonged instability caused by many factors in the Gaza Strip. First of all, the Gaza Strip is suffering from the policy of "DeDevelopment" applied by the occupation for more than 70 years. This policy aims to starve the economy and nation. In the last two decades, the Gaza Strip faced several extreme events like wars and sieges. Moreover, the Gaza Stirp suffers from political conflict among the Palestinian political parties which increase the situation of economic instability. These factors form the situation of prolonged instability and increase the challenges for business owners in sustaining their business in long term.

The main goal of this research is to investigate how business owners in the Gaza Strip sustain their business under a prolonged unstable environment. This research has three particular objectives. The first objective is to identify the main challenges facing business owners in the Gaza Strip and the methods and processes they use to overcome these challenges and sustain their business. The second objective is to identify the most effective decision-making processes used by business owners to sustain their business under prolonged unstable conditions. The third and last objective is to develop a model of business sustainability under prolonged instability.

Two theories are used to guide the research work. The first is business sustainability theory as the main theory and the second is business continuity theory. The combination of two theories helped the researcher to develop a model of business sustainability under prolonged instability.

This research as an exploratory research applying a qualitative methodology. The data were collected through semi-structured interview with open ended answers. The informants of this study were business owners in the Gaza Strip. The sample was selected as criterion sample. All of the informants are running their business for more than 5 years, still running the business and intending to continue their business in the Gaza Strip. The data are analyzed via NVivo Plus 12 software.

The main outcome of this research is the model of business sustainability under instability. The research found that business owners can sustain their business under prolonged unstable environment. Business owners are using various tactics to sustain their business. Different conditions surrounding business owners and differences in management skills lead to different management styles and different business solutions to sustain business under prolonged instability. Decision-making plays a vital role in business sustainability. One of main findings in this research is that some business owners start new business under prolonged unstable environment to open new opportunity to stay in the market for a long term. Moreover, this research found that successful business owners are cooperating more than competing under extreme situation where they understand that cooperation means surviving for all. Older business owners gave valuable advices for new entrepreneurs to start, run and sustain their business under prolonged unstable environment.