Cooperative resilience: Toward a heuristic model of collective action in a crisis

Abstract

This paper examines financial cooperatives (credit unions) in Ireland and their response to COVID‐19. The paper offers two contributions. The first is the Cooperative Resilience Framework, which highlights the importance of iterative, heuristic responses in building capabilities that enable routine‐based responses. These responses, in turn, avoid and absorb the effects of disruption in subsequent similar crises. The second contribution is empirical, demonstrating the how of resilience by offering a better understanding of how the credit unions’ collective actions created dynamic, agile responses that helped them to “bounce forward” after the crisis. Key themes identified include agility, strong social relationships, and decentralized decision‐making (empowerment).

Deep pockets or empty coffers? Functional expenses, contribution revenue and the ability of nonprofits to pivot during COVID-19

“…This is particularly interesting, given the non-zero FER and FCER medians for the Environment and Animals subsector Business as Usual timeframe discussed above, and exemplifies that future research should explore the individual characteristics that impacted nonprofits' "ability to pivot", complementing studies using behavioral interview and survey data that have begun to explore COVID-19 resilience in nonprofits (e.g. Mangan and Ward, 2023;Plaisance, 2022a, b, etc. ) along with heeding the call for studies examining the information environment in conjunction with financial data to understand the resilience environment for nonprofits (Parker, 2023).…”

“…This is consistent with Plaisance (2022b) who notes that nonprofit resilience can be defined by either activity continuity or organizational persistence and that the ability of organizations to maintain relationships with their communities and stakeholders greatly impacted the resilience of arts organizations in France during COVID-19. Similarly, Mangan and Ward (2023) use interviews to examine the response of credit unions in Ireland to COVID-19 and find that nimble, decentralized organizations, with strong relationships were better able to respond to the challenges of COVID-19. This further highlights the importance of exploring individual characteristics within subsectors that impacted nonprofits' "ability to pivot" in future research.…”

The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune: Exploring resilience in the third sector

“…Mangan and Ward (2024) examined 18 financial cooperatives (credit unions) in Ireland and their response to COVID‐19. Credit unions represent a global phenomenon, with 86,451 credit unions and 375 million members across 118 countries at the time of writing (World Council of Credit Unions, 2021).…”

“…The literature is less clear, however, about how such resilience is developed. Mangan and Ward (2024), therefore, explored what specific actions, structures, and processes enable these organizations to survive in the face of adversity. Data were collected using semistructured interviews focusing on the period of the COVID‐19 pandemic.…”

“…This is followed by a section that labels the key themes from the papers in the Issue utilizing two major subheadings. The first of these (The COVID‐19 crisis and TSOs) focuses on papers (Liñares‐Zegarra and Wilson, 2024; Mangan and Ward, 2024) relating to the COVID‐19 pandemic and provides examples of an external shock that generated the need for TSOs to both “bounce back” and “bounce forward” (see Section 2 for a fuller explanation of these terms). The Section TSOs and other crises, which reflects on papers by Parker (2024), Cordery and Yates (2024), Paterson and Lambert (2024), Willems et al.…”