Market Systems for Resilience

2020 by, Lund, S., Manyika, J., Woetzel, J., Barribal, E., Krishnan, M., Alicke, K., Birshan, M., George, K., Smit, S., Swan, D., & Hutzler, K. for the McKinsey Global Institute. Lund et al. argues that supply chains in a post-Covid world will need to manage crises beyond Covid – like Climate change, ransomware, and other shocks – in an ever interconnecting world. Lund argues that transparency of information, the flow of data and transparency of one’s supply chain, minimization of exposure, through the identification, prequalification, and onboarding of backup vendors and the creation of common components, and agility – just in time vs just in case business models – will be significant in being resilient in the face of shocks.

This article, geared toward businesses in general, can be applied to the cooperative model due to the nature in which cooperatives can uniquely apply their advantages to these points. In addition to addressing the issues directly (more ethical, more sustainable, more environmentally conscious, etc.) cooperatives are more transparent (know their supply chains), agile and adaptable (due to membership control and economic participation), serve as their own redundancies (as a collection of workers) and provide alternative sources of income, and can – as a collective entity – serve as loci of “just in case” on behalf of their members.