Abstract
Despite the global COVID-19 pandemic ushering multiple socio-political and economic crises for organisations and society, the current scholarly spike is constrained to what constitutes the crises and how organisations respond financially. This approach has missed fundamental capabilities on organisations’ readiness for future crisis change. Drawing from the SMEs-in-Crisis literature, it is argued how Teece’s (1997) and Eisendhardt ant Martin’s (2000) Dynamic Capabilities Approach can be viewed within this burgeoning scholarship whose focus remains on identifying responses, rather than adopting a more readiness approach to disruptions. Six capability constructs have been developed from examining the crisis change literature to ascertain how organisations internally and externally prepare for further disruptive change. Theoretical developments before, during and post-COVID-19 provide the basis for this paper’s four-staged ‘Disruptive Capabilities Adoption, Diffusion and Sustainability’ or ‘D-CADS Approach’ to fill the gap on how contemporary organisations become financially and people-ready for ongoing disruptive change. New and future research trajectories are considered.