Cooperative Resilience during the Pandemic: Indonesia and Malaysia Evidence

Abstract

Two issues occur related to cooperatives’ entity resilience during the COVID-19 pandemic. The first comes from external stakeholders increasing the role of government in empowering cooperatives. Second is the strengthening of solidarity cooperatives members demonstrate in helping each other. To address these issues, the purpose of this study will be to explore the role of government in supporting cooperative resilience and to observe the internal values of cooperatives. Examining these two concerns will reveal how cooperatives engage external and internal stakeholders to handle unforeseen circumstances. Data were collected from two cognate countries, Indonesia and Malaysia. To gather data, 9 informants were interviewed, and 14 YouTube channels and 6 government websites were observed. The data were transcribed and analyzed. These data lead to the following two themes: the significant government support and the tight connected feeling of members to help each other, called gotong royong. These themes will be useful for understanding the optimal way to increase the engagement of external and internal cooperative stakeholders, as the key to cooperative resilience. It was found that government has a major role in the development of cooperatives, in both countries, Indonesia and Malaysia. Gotong royong, as the spirit of the cooperative movement, especially in Indonesia, saved the cooperative industry during the pandemic. This study supports the stakeholder theory and social capital theory and contributes to the literature on the practices of cooperatives in two countries.