Investigating the Trends and Future Research of SMEs in the Era of COVID-19: Perceptions from Bibliometric Analysis

Abstract

This paper reviews the impacts of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) on small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) based on a study of the relevant literature, followed by a discussion of the current state of the research and potential future paths. Based on the 519 reviews and articles gathered from the Web of Science (WoS) between 2020 and 2022, a bibliometric analysis of the influential studies of the impacts of COVID-19 on SMEs in terms of various aspects such as research areas, journals, countries or regions, authors, most cited publications, and author keywords were carried out. The findings of the study reported that the major research areas related to the impacts of COVID-19 on SMEs were “Business” (28.32%), “Management” (21.39%), and “Economics” (13.3%). The most productive journal was the Sustainability, with a total publication of 41. China, Indonesia, and UK were the top three contributing countries. Furthermore, “COVID-19”, “SMEs”, “resilience”, “sustainability”, and “innovation” were the most popular keywords from 2020 until 2022. When combined with the most cited articles in recent years, the topics on challenges and opportunities for SMEs during the crisis by Eggers in 2020 maintained their rank as the dominant articles with the highest number of total citations, 164.