Building Resilience in the Malawian Co-operative Movement

The latest in a series of research papers published by the Co-operative College looks at an issue of importance to co-operatives everywhere: resilience.

‘Building Resilience in the Malawian Co‑operative Movement’, by Sara Vicari and Alexander Borda-Rodriguez, is the outcome of a one-year, Leverhulme-funded collaborative research project between the Co-operative College and The Open University. The paper looks at questions such as: What creates resilience;  Are co-operatives particularly resilient organisations?; If so, what explains it?; And if there are aspects that are not so resilient, what can be about them?

Although the project focused on the co-operative movement in the south-east African country of Malawi, one of the poorest in the world, it is hoped that the findings will have a resonance beyond academia and will help inform strategies for co-operative development in many countries and parts of the world.