Organizational Resilience in Cooperatives: A Capability-based Approach

Purpose: This study investigates how cooperatives conceptualize organizational resilience through a capability-based approach. It identifies which practices and attributes, often influenced by the cooperative principles, enhance or hinder resilience across three stages of resilience: “resistance and recovery”, “adaptation and transformation”, and “anticipation and avoidance”.
Methodology: Using an abductive approach, we conducted 20 semi-structured interviews with managers, founders and administrators of Belgian French-speaking cooperatives of various types (consumer, producer, worker and multistakeholder) and sectors. Data were thematically coded and mapped to resilience stages and cooperative principles.
Findings: We identify 20 attributes and practices influencing resilience. Member involvement, solidarity, prudence and inter-cooperative collaboration emerge as critical enablers, while slowness, inefficiencies, idealism and misaligned expectation may undermine resilience. We also show that the “anticipation and avoidance” stage seems to carry a higher degree of attributes and practices when compared to the previous ones. Finally, we contend that cooperative size, maturity and founding rationale influence cooperative resilience management.
Originality: This research advances organizational resilience theory by integrating cooperative identity into a capability-based framework and moving beyond single-case and single-crisis analyses. Through cooperatives, This research highlights how capability-based resilience frameworks can be empirically illustrated. The study also offers insights for cooperatives and other organizations seeking to strengthen their resilience.