Building Resilience: Towards a Heuristic Model of Collective Action in a Crisis

Co-operatives are frequently cited as out-performing other organisational forms in a crisis, though few studies have investigated why this is so. To explore this issue, this article uses an analytical lens of resilience and lessons from the Irish credit union sector’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, to design the Building Resilience Framework. This framework highlights the role of collective action, an important facet of relational resilience that is prevalent in the co-operative model, in ensuring an appropriate response to crisis. Discussion of the framework also extends the literature on resilience to include life-threatening events and the role of collective action in enabling dynamic, heuristic responses. Finally, the paper contributes empirically, by demonstrating how strong collective action capabilities enabled Irish credit unions to respond to social dilemmas. At first they adopted dynamic, agile, innovative ad hoc approaches that were sub-optimal but effective. As the crisis continued, they focused more on heuristic responses that prioritised sustainability and strategic business models to provide long-term solutions to the ‘new COVID normal’. We argue that the social relationships at the heart of the co-operative model offer useful lessons about collective responses to crisis.