image: The Economic and Social Committee of the Valencian Community has awarded one of its 2025 Doctoral Thesis Awards to Iluminada Vallet Bellmunt, a lecturer in the Department of Business Administration and Marketing at the Universitat Jaume I in Castelló. The thesis, entitled "The resilience of independent retail: a model of antecedents and consequences", was supervised by Marisa Flor and Víctor del Corte and tutored by Teresa Vallet-Bellmunt. The thesis, defended in December 2024 in the Interuniversity Doctoral Programme in Marketing, explores the factors that foster organisational resilience in small independent retailers and analyses how this capacity enhances innovation and business performance. The results highlight that the individual resilience of the owner and the entrepreneurial orientation of the business are two of the factors that drive organisational resilience. In addition to the resilience and adaptability of the people who lead the businesses, organisational resilience is also influenced by the characteristics of the work team, the organisational structure, external networks and environmental conditions. The methodology was based on a closed-ended questionnaire, with 150 validated responses. The distribution of the businesses surveyed was 26.74% from Alicante, 11.42% from Castelló de la Plana and 61.84% from Valencia, representing different sectors such as food, drugstores and perfumeries, flowers, jewellery and watches, home, fashion, leisure, stationery and health. On a practical level, the research recommends that owners or managers strengthen their ability to cope with adverse situations and promote an entrepreneurial mindset throughout the organisation. In addition, public policies can strengthen organisational resilience in small businesses through leadership and crisis management training programmes. The research and its results are available to the public at La resiliencia del comercio minorista independiente: un modelo de antecedentes y consecuencias - TDX (Tesis Doctorals en Xarxa). In the same call for these awards, Isabel Aparisi Cerdá from the Polytechnic University of Valencia was also awarded for her thesis "Development of methodologies for energy planning of urban districts with just energy transition perspective". Three honourable mentions were awarded to José Miguel Sánchez Ocaña, Juan Manuel Rodilla Navarro and Pablo Jesús Huerta Viso from the University of Valencia. Image courtesy of the Economic and Social Committee of the Valencian Community
Credit: Economic and Social Committee of the Valencian Community
The Economic and Social Committee of the Valencian Community has awarded one of its 2025 Doctoral Thesis Awards to Iluminada Vallet Bellmunt, a lecturer in the Department of Business Administration and Marketing at the Universitat Jaume I in Castelló. The thesis, entitled "The resilience of independent retail: a model of antecedents and consequences", was supervised by Marisa Flor and Víctor del Corte and tutored by Teresa Vallet-Bellmunt.
The thesis, defended in December 2024 in the Interuniversity Doctoral Programme in Marketing, explores the factors that foster organisational resilience in small independent retailers and analyses how this capacity enhances innovation and business performance. The results highlight that the individual resilience of the owner and the entrepreneurial orientation of the business are two of the factors that drive organisational resilience.
In addition to the resilience and adaptability of the people who lead the businesses, organisational resilience is also influenced by the characteristics of the work team, the organisational structure, external networks and environmental conditions. The methodology was based on a closed-ended questionnaire, with 150 validated responses. The distribution of the businesses surveyed was 26.74% from Alicante, 11.42% from Castelló de la Plana and 61.84% from Valencia, representing different sectors such as food, drugstores and perfumeries, flowers, jewellery and watches, home, fashion, leisure, stationery and health.
In terms of internal factors, the conclusions refer to four. One of the most influential would be the individual capacity of the entrepreneur to assimilate, react and adapt to unexpected changes, as well as entrepreneurial orientation, which facilitates proactive and sustained adaptation of commercial activity. The third would be the ability to adapt to a constantly changing market with digitalisation, and the fourth would be the use of external knowledge funds, which, although positive, have not stood out for their influence on organisational resilience.
With regard to the business variables influenced by resilience, the conclusions indicate that innovation, driven by resilience itself, enables companies to adapt quickly and exploit emerging opportunities in the market. This is because resilience organises the company's ability to adapt and generate new solutions, while innovation transforms this adaptability into concrete improvements such as increased turnover, customer expansion or improved profitability.
On a practical level, the research recommends that owners or managers strengthen their ability to cope with adverse situations and promote an entrepreneurial mindset throughout the organisation. In addition, public policies can strengthen organisational resilience in small businesses through leadership and crisis management training programmes.
The research and its results are available to the public at La resiliencia del comercio minorista independiente: un modelo de antecedentes y consecuencias - TDX (Tesis Doctorals en Xarxa).
In the same call for these awards, Isabel Aparisi Cerdá from the Polytechnic University of Valencia was also awarded for her thesis "Development of methodologies for energy planning of urban districts with just energy transition perspective". Three honourable mentions were awarded to José Miguel Sánchez Ocaña, Juan Manuel Rodilla Navarro and Pablo Jesús Huerta Viso from the University of Valencia.