Schools that bend without breaking: Internal cohesion as a strategic resource for organizational resilience in fragile settings

Educational institutions in fragile socio-economic environments face severe systemic shocks that threaten their operational continuity. Situated within the educational leadership and management literature, this study investigates the relationship between internal cohesion, operationalized through spontaneous collegial support, information circulation, and conflict dynamics, and organizational resilience in private schools in Bukavu, Democratic Republic of the Congo. Data were collected from private schools operating under conditions of extreme socio-political and financial volatility and analyzed using structural equation modeling. The findings indicate that internal cohesion is positively associated with organizational resilience. In fragile contexts characterized by limited institutional safety nets, mutual support networks emerge as important relational features accompanying distributed leadership and pedagogical adaptation. Conversely, interpersonal conflict is negatively associated with organizational resilience. The findings suggest that organizational resilience is closely associated with relational dynamics and collective teacher efficacy. They further indicate that fostering internal cohesion may represent a promising and cost-effective strategy for sustaining educational continuity during acute crises.