Perception of Resilience: A Member's Perspective on German Agricultural Marketing Cooperatives

Cooperatives account for 40% of the agricultural market share in the European Union. This study investigates the factors influencing perceived resilience in German agricultural marketing cooperatives. Drawing on the resilience theory, we examine how not only robustness, adaptability and transformability, but also cooperative principles contribute to members' perceptions of their organization's resilience. Using partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM), we analyze survey data from 144 agricultural marketing cooperative’s members collected online in Germany in 2024. Our findings reveal that all four factors statistically significantly contribute to perceived resilience, with cooperative values and principles showing the strongest influence. Our results suggest that while traditional resilience capacities like robustness, adaptability and transformability are important, the cooperative model itself, represented by its values and principles, plays a crucial role in members' perceptions of resilience. These results have important implications for cooperative management, suggesting that reinforcing cooperative values while developing balanced resilience strategies could enhance member confidence and organizational resilience. Thus, this study contributes to the growing literature on resilience by incorporating the unique aspects of cooperative organizations and emphasizing the role of member perceptions beyond the agricultural context.