Cushioning the Covid-19 Economic Consequences on Entrepreneurial Ecosystems: The Role of Stakeholders' Engagement, Collaboration, and Support

The Covid-19 (corona virus) disruptions have necessitated a new way of thinking about how entrepreneurship and its environments (ecosystems) function in times of heightened uncertainty. Based on a sample of 237 entrepreneurial ecosystem (EE) stakeholders in Tanzania - an emerging economy, we examine the pandemic economic consequences steered by government countermeasures on the EE-perceived quality and performance. We further examined the role played by EE stakeholders' engagement, collaboration, and support during the crisis. Our structural equation model results suggest that strictness of government counter measures for containment of the current pandemic predicament has a bearing on EE- perceived quality and performance by fueling EE vulnerability via amplifying the magnitude of the negative effects. We further find that stakeholders' engagement and collaboration play a significant role in improving the EE-perceived quality and slowing down EE-vulnerability. We conclude by providing the implications and avenues for future research.