The ‘resilience’ of community organisations during the COVID-19 pandemic: absorptive, adaptive and transformational capacity during a crisis response

Abstract

This Research Note applies the concept of ‘resilience’ to explore how Neighbourhood Networks in Leeds in the UK – 37 local community organisations supporting older people – responded to the COVID-19 pandemic. It highlights how understanding resilience as a capacity that can be absorptive, adaptive or transformative helps describe the response of community organisations during the pandemic, highlighting a process of ongoing adjustment and innovation as the pandemic evolved. We suggest that the concept of resilience is helpful in this context for understanding how community organisations responded to the emergent nature of the crisis, but it is less effective at revealing why that may have been the case. This limitation notwithstanding, we argue that absorptive, adaptive and transformative capacity ought to be desirable attributes of community organisations if they are distributed equitably and enable them to fulfil their mission and contribute to social change.

Resilience in care organisations: challenges in maintaining support for vulnerable people in Europe during the Covid‐19 pandemic

“…Linking the country statistics and interview results, the increased demand for food and shelter appears to be particularly stark in those countries where the employment opportunities decreased the most (Estonia, Finland, and Lithuania). These results are in accordance with descriptions from previous research on the first wave, indicating greater demand for services, while the care providers faced challenges related to diminishing means and operating restrictions (Amadasun, 2020 ; Banks et al, 2020 ; Dayson et al, 2021 ).…”

Beyond survival mode: Organizational resilience capabilities in nonprofit arts and culture fundraising during the Covid‐19 pandemic

“…The term “resilience” is commonly used to designate individual and organizational practices responding positively to a setback or crisis in various contexts (Hickman, 2018 ). Despite critiques of resilience as an ideological “smokescreen” that shifts “the onus into individuals and communities to take care of their own problems” (Dayson et al, 2021 , p. 297; see also Bene et al, 2012 ; MacKinnon & Derickson, 2013 ; Newsinger & Serafini, 2021 ), research on resilience continues to rapidly increase on a par with the substantial disruptions – from terrorist attacks to financial downturns ‐ that create an environment of uncertainty and crisis (Lengnick‐Hall & Beck, 2005 ). When an organization demonstrates a collective capability for resilience, it means that it has an ability to understand “the current situation”, as well as “to develop customized responses” that reflect such “understanding” (Lengnick‐Hall & Beck, 2005 , p. 750).…”

Individual-based and interactional resilience mechanisms in social and healthcare service NPOs during the COVID-19 pandemic: Handling a disruptive extreme context in Austria

“…Drawing on the work of Dayson et al ( 2021 ) and Hutton et al ( 2021 ), we propose that providing services during a pandemic requires organizational resilience, which refers to the organizational ability to resist adversities while maintaining and adjusting operations, e.g., in terms of service delivery (Sutcliffe and Vogus, 2003 ; Van der Vegt et al, 2015 ; Witmer and Mellinger, 2016 ; McCarthy et al, 2017 ). This is due to its “emphasis on prompt and autonomous recovery that does not rely on specialized resources” (Mithani, 2020 , p. 509).…”

“…They consider NPO resilience to consist of five tactical themes (i.e., financial, human resources, outreach, programs and services, as well as management and leadership) and corresponding subordinate resiliency tactics. Besides, Dayson et al ( 2021 ) explored how local community organizations supporting the elderly handle the pandemic. They conceptualize organizational resilience as absorptive, adaptive and transformative capacity.…”

“…Those are sometimes considered to be a (rather unstructured) combination of capacities (management), processes and resources (see, e.g., Witmer and Mellinger, 2016 ; Hutton et al, 2021 ), or themes and tactics (cf., e.g., Searing et al, 2021 ) as well as characteristics, skills, abilities or competences (see e.g., Herberg and Torgersen, 2021 ). Besides, research predominately focusses on organizational level resilience mechanisms such as strategic planning, financial management or inter-organizational collaboration (Dayson et al, 2021 ; Hutton et al, 2021 ; Searing et al, 2021 ; Kim et al, 2022 ). We identified only a few empirical papers focusing on individual and relational resilience mechanisms of NPOs in extreme contexts (Witmer and Mellinger, 2016 ; Förster and Füreder, 2021 ; Herberg and Torgersen, 2021 ).…”