Strategic Thinking and Entrepreneurial Orientation as Drivers of Adaptive Resilience in Global Manufacturing SMEs: A Narrative Review of Dynamic Capabilities and Cross-Context Variations

In this review we investigate how strategic thinking and entrepreneurial orientation jointly foster adaptive resilience in manufacturing SMEs, addressing a critical knowledge gap regarding their integrated role across sensing, seizing, reconfiguring, learning, and strategic renewal capabilities in diverse institutional contexts. Our review aims to synthesise recent evidence on mechanisms of adaptive resilience, identify persistent challenges, and inform both theory and policy. Anchored in Dynamic Capabilities Theory and Organisational Resilience Theory, the review employs a qualitative thematic analysis of literature from major electronic databases spanning 2020 to 2025, focusing on empirical and conceptual studies of global manufacturing SMEs. Our findings indicate that strategic thinking and entrepreneurial orientation enable early recognition of environmental signals, disciplined opportunity prioritisation, resource reconfiguration, experiential learning, and continuous strategic renewal. Persistent challenges comprise resource constraints in emerging economies, institutional barriers, variability in strategic adoption, and limited longitudinal evidence on resilience outcomes. The review concludes that adaptive resilience is a dynamic, context-sensitive process requiring deliberate strategic design and proactive entrepreneurial action. Its contribution is twofold: empirically, by consolidating contemporary insights into SME resilience mechanisms, and theoretically, by extending dynamic capabilities and organisational resilience frameworks to complex, small-scale manufacturing contexts. For policymakers, the findings underscore the importance of creating enabling ecosystems, targeted innovation financing, capability development programmes, and context-specific interventions to strengthen SME resilience, competitiveness, and long-term strategic adaptability.