Family coordination and digital transformation: resilience and post-COVID reinvention in Saudi micro and small family enterprises

Purpose This study aims to explain how family-based coordination resources support post-crisis change by distinguishing organizational resilience from post-crisis reinvention. It tests whether family embeddedness, family labour reliance and informal family governance predict later resilience and whether digitalization strengthens the resilience−reinvention relationship in Saudi micro and small family enterprises. Design/methodology/approach A two-wave survey with an exact 70-day individual lag produced an analytic sample of 318 firms. Time 1 measured family resources, digitalization, COVID shock severity and baseline outcomes; Time 2 measured resilience and reinvention. Primary models in Mplus 8.10 used MLR, FIML and autoregressive controls. Indirect-effect intervals came from a separate 5,000-replication ML bootstrap, and the latent resilience x digitalization interaction was estimated separately under TYPE = RANDOM. Findings All three family resources were positively associated with Time 2 resilience, but their direct paths to reinvention were small and nonsignificant. Their indirect associations through resilience were significant. Resilience and digitalization were positively associated with reinvention, and the resilience−reinvention relationship strengthened as digitalization increased. Because resilience and reinvention were contemporaneous at Time 2, the conditional indirect pattern is interpreted associationally. Originality/value This study develops a staged conditional-process explanation: family resources supply coordination capacity for continuity, while digitalization strengthens the conversion of preserved capacity into renewal. The Saudi setting makes this mechanism theoretically salient because kin-based coordination and informal governance coexist with institutional modernization and rapid SME digitalization.