Product Development by SMEs as a Response to COVID-19 : An Elaboration of Socio-Technical Systems Theory

The purpose of this research is to understand how social capabilities and infrastructural enablers support technical capabilities for product development by Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) as a response to COVDI19, and to examine the above relationships between those using conventional versus additive manufacturing (AM) technologies. Using socio-technical systems as the theoretical lens, in-depth interviews with key informants from six COVID19 emergency response projects by SMEs were carried out. The findings show that social capabilities of human ingenuity, resourcefulness of network and on- the-feet problem solving, along with logistical support as infrastructural enabler supported the technical capabilities in all the cases irrespective of manufacturing technology being used. But, the relationship between social capabilities, infrastructural enablers and technical capabilities varied with use of AM versus conventional manufacturing. Socio-Technical Systems (STS) theory is elaborated by embedding dynamic capabilities into the socio-technical core of STS for pandemic response