Co-operatives in times of crisis : crisis management for co-operatives in the agricultural sector

Abstract: In recent times Sweden has faced several crises beginning with the drought in 2018, Covid-19 during 2019-2022, and finally the war in Ukraine. All these three crises have and will affect the Swedish agricultural sector in different ways. Since we now see that crises can and will continue to happen it is important to see how the agricultural sector handle crises and how resilient it is. Since most Swedish farmers are connected to one if not several of Swedish agricultural co-operatives, it is of importance that the co-operatives which buy and sell agricultural products are resilient themselves towards crises. The goal for this study is to understand how co-operatives in the agricultural sector decide on strategies and if there are any differences in decision making and crisis management between a large co-operative and a smaller one. In order to do this the study is a comparative case study between Lantmännen (large co-operative) and Varaslättens Lagerhus (mid-sized co- operative). The data used to do this study was gathered via interviews with Patrik Myrelid, strategic manager at Lantmännen, and Karl Dehlin, CEO at Varaslättens Lagerhus. The focus of this study is to answer the research question: “What are the different strategies for dealing with crises for two co-operatives of different size?”. In order to analyse the data that was gathered the study involves four main theories that are used in the analysis, these theories are: Co-operative theory, SWOT analysis, decision theory, and contingency theory. The analysis showed a number of similarities between the two co-operatives, the main point that was noted was however that both co-operatives are fast to swap their decision-making process in times of crisis to facilitate faster and more adaptable decisions, to increase their resilience and easier handle the uncertain environment that exists during a crisis.