Impacts of Covid-19 on Cooperatives in Sweden : a Case Study of Arla Foods

Sammanfattning: Different organizations face diverse challenges to survive during Covid-19. Rare external disruptions due to natural causes such as pandemics affect a company's ability to continue operations, from obtaining raw materials from suppliers to delivering finished products directly to the market. Such as short-term or long-term closings, decreased job opportunities, failed projects with financial effects, and challenges in executing new strategies etc. Various authors argue that member-centric cooperatives are more resilient in times of crisis compared to traditional enterprises. Because cooperatives are owned and controlled by their owners to maximize the value of members' goods, services, or savings rather than profit as a financial organization, this thesis aims to examine and finds out how Covid-19 effects Swedish dairy cooperative Arla economically and how they are coping with the pandemic crisis through a qualitative case study methodology. The purpose of this thesis is to examine how Arla as a cooperative remains economically viable during covid. The results of empirical data from semi-structured interviews suggest that the appropriate application of crisis decision-making framework practices strengthens this organization's workflow and withstands environmental disturbances like covid to achieve business continuity. Arla's existing organizational structure, diversified business portfolio, supply chain design, and combination of global and local business strategies gave them an edge to better manage their operations and helped its management to be quick in decisions and adopt reactive measures to adjust to the new situation of the pandemic. This thesis illustrates how appropriate practice of crisis decision-making framework consisting of four elements (cognition, communication, coordination, and control) of a leading dairy industry in Sweden increased the ability to act even in unprecedented events such as the corona pandemic.