How digital skills and IT capabilities drive SMEs’ performance: The mediating role of entrepreneurial resilience

This study examines how digital skills and information technology (IT) capabilities shape small and medium-sized enterprises’ (SMEs’) performance, with entrepreneurial resilience as a mediator. Drawing on the resource-based view and dynamic capabilities view, this research aims to fill gaps in understanding how digital skills and robust IT capabilities require adaptive, resilience-building processes to translate into sustained performance gains. Using structural equation modeling on survey data from 227 Tunisian SMEs, the findings indicate that digital skills and IT capabilities have positive direct effects on performance. However, entrepreneurial resilience emerges as a proactive, value-creating capability that turns digital endowments into financial, market, and digital performance. The results offer theoretical implications for integrating resources and dynamic capabilities, as well as practical guidance for prioritizing skill development, IT investment, and resilience programs in the digital transformation of SMEs.