Perception of resilience: Member perspectives on German agricultural marketing cooperatives

This study examines the factors shaping members' perceived resilience of German agricultural marketing cooperatives. Drawing on resilience theory, we analyze how the resilience capacities robustness, adaptability, and transformability contribute to members' perceived resilience, and how values and principles of cooperative entities are associated with these capacities. Using partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM), we analyze survey data collected online in 2024 from 144 members of German agricultural marketing cooperatives. The results show that perceived robustness, adaptability, and transformability are all positively associated with members' perceived resilience of the cooperative. The values and principles of the cooperative exhibit strong positive associations with all three resilience capacities, indicating that the cooperative model plays an important role in shaping resilience perceptions indirectly through these capacities. While the three traditional resilience capacities remain central to perceived resilience, the findings highlight that value-based governance and member-centered organizational characteristics are key mechanisms through which cooperatives foster confidence in their resilience. These results have important implications for co-op management, suggesting that reinforcing the values and principles of the cooperative while simultaneously developing balanced resilience strategies can strengthen members’ confidence in their organizations. This is especially crucial since cooperatives account for approximately 40% of the agricultural market share in the European Union. • Cooperatives have substantial market share in European Union's agricultural sector. • Members perceive resilience as a combination of robustness, adaptability, and transformability in agricultural marketing cooperatives. • Cooperative values and principles strongly reinforce all three resilience capacities from a member perspective. • Perceived resilience is shaped indirectly by cooperative values through resilience capacities rather than directly.