Social Reliability and Organizational Resilience: How SMEs Navigate Violence and Uncertainty in Celaya, Mexico

This qualitative study examines the challenges faced by small and medium enterprise (SME) leaders in Celaya, Mexico-a city ranked among the world's most violent-focusing on strategic thinking and social reliability as key constructs shaping decision-making in high-risk environments.Through indepth interviews with entrepreneurs and municipal officials, the research explores how these leaders interpret uncertainty, institutional trust, and risk mitigation.Findings reveal critically low social reliability, with participants citing governmental inaction, corruption, and organized crime as primary drivers of insecurity.Concurrently, strategic thinking is underutilized; SME leaders conflate it with heuristic tools rather than systemic problem-solving, prioritizing reactive measures over long-term planning.Despite these challenges, the study identifies a paradox: while volatile conditions discourage formal strategy development, fostering strategic cognition becomes vital for survival.Results emphasize the need to integrate experiential knowledge with structured strategic processes, involving diverse stakeholders to bridge gaps in governance and innovation.The study concludes that enhancing strategic agency in high-risk contexts requires collaborative frameworks that reconcile immediate action with adaptive foresight, addressing both cognitive and structural barriers to resilience.