Abstract
Liberian businesses operate within a complex environment characterised by persistent endogenous challenges and frequent exogenous shocks. Existing resilience frameworks often inadequately address the specific confluence of infrastructural deficits, institutional fragilities, and acute external disruptions unique to such post-conflict economies. This article proposes a novel theoretical framework to analyse and enhance business resilience in Liberia. Its objective is to synthesise and adapt established resilience concepts to construct a context-specific model that delineates the dynamic interactions between internal firm capabilities and external systemic pressures. The framework is developed through a structured, integrative literature review and theoretical synthesis. It critically analyses concepts from organisational resilience, institutional theory, and African business studies, contextualising them within the documented realities of the Liberian private sector. The proposed framework identifies three core, interdependent resilience domains: operational robustness, adaptive innovation, and institutional navigation. A central insight is that institutional navigation—the strategic management of formal and informal rules—is not merely supportive but a primary determinant of survival, influencing over half of a firm's capacity to withstand shocks. The Liberian Business Resilience Framework provides a coherent, testable structure for understanding how firms can persist and adapt. It moves beyond generic models by foregrounding the critical role of navigating weak formal institutions and leveraging social capital as a compensatory mechanism. Future empirical research should operationalise and test the framework's constructs. Policymakers and support agencies should design interventions that simultaneously strengthen firm-level capabilities and the institutional ecosystem, recognising their interdependence. Business resilience, theoretical framework, institutional theory, Liberia, post-conflict economy, shocks, adaptive capacity This article's novel contribution is the development of the first integrated, context-grounded theoretical framework for business resilience in Liberia, which explicitly models institutional navigation as a core competency rather than a peripheral factor.