Beyond the hero: Resilience, strategic intentions, and performance among surviving Ukrainian small businesses in wartime

Prolonged armed conflict has disrupted Ukraine’s small business sector, yet firm-level outcomes vary even among surviving firms. Moving beyond “heroic individualism,” this study integrates upper echelons and imprinting theories to examine how psychological resilience is associated with perceived business performance, and whether intentions toward proactive strategic responses mediate this relationship. Survey data from 178 Ukrainian micro-sized and small business owners (June–September 2024) were analyzed with structural equation modeling and bootstrapped mediation. Given the cross-sectional design, all relationships are interpreted as associations. Resilience is positively associated with performance (β = 0.499, p < .01) and proactive intentions (β = 0.366, p < .01), intentions are associated with performance (β = 0.240, p < .05), and the indirect association is significant (β = 0.088, p < .05), indicating partial mediation. The findings describe surviving small businesses and suggest that war-context resilience requires supportive ecosystems, with targeted support for relocated firms.