ABSTRACT
Firms are evolving in a world that has become unstable and violent, going through democratic revolutions and the rise of extremism and terrorism. This chapter aims to understand how certain firms manage to get through troubled periods whereas others struggle to emerge from them or even collapse. It analyzes managers’ responses concerning the encountered difficulties and the seizing/building of opportunities that contributed to their firm’s resilience. The accumulated knowledge, on the one hand on organizational resilience to shocks, and on the other hand on seizing entrepreneurial opportunities, can be combined to study the survival of firms over a long period of social, political and economic upheaval. During the study period, Tunisia’s corruption ranking fell according to the Corruption Perception Index published by Transparency International, and it was ranked 76th in 2015. The World Bank concludes its report on the unfinished revolution by noting that prosperity in Tunisia is hampered by policies that have reduced the country’s overall economic performance.
