Are Loosely Coupled Organizations Resilient to Crises? Five French Higher Education Institutions Facing Covid

Abstract Most authors conclude that loose coupling plays a positive role during a crisis but very few, if any, empirically examine what concretely happens when loosely coupled organizations – that is, organizations with a high number of loosely coupled activities and units – face a crisis. The Covid pandemic opened an opportunity to answer this question, given that universities are typical loosely coupled organizations. We considered five higher education institutions in France from January 2020 to February 2021 that experienced the same national regulations and health measures. We first observed that a high level of loose coupling was not detrimental to business continuity and that in loosely coupled organizations, coupling plays the reverse role of some loose coupling in tightly coupled organizations. Second, comparing loosely coupled and coupled activities within universities, we also observed that loose coupling could have negative or positive effects, depending on the conditions imposed by the French government: stay at home and move to remote work from the first lockdown to the summer of 2020; adapt to constant changes in national health guidelines after the beginning of the new academic year. We thus identify the conditions under which loose coupling becomes a solution, or not, in times of crisis.