Publications

Résumé

In this chapter, we examine how the cultural sector, one of the hardest hit by the COVID-19 pandemic, has recovered to varying degrees around the world due to resilience in its governance. The cultural sector is primarily composed of nonprofit organizations, where governance evolves through a relationship between the board of directors and the executive managers. To explore the role of resilience in cultural governance, we adopt the theoretical frame developed in recent research by Stephanie Duchek. Her model progresses through three stages of resilience: anticipation, coping, and adaptation. For each stage, organizational capabilities are mobilized. Through our study of a community of cultural organizations in a semi-rural region in Canada, we analyze how the capabilities in Duchek’s model have helped the cultural sector to survive. Our data show that resilience appears to be a strategic component of the governance of cultural organizations.

Our contribution is twofold. First, we adapted Duchek’s resilience model from the organizational to the sectoral level. Through collaboration among organizations, this region’s cultural community navigated the crisis, demonstrating resilience across the entire sector. Second, at the organizational level, we identified temporary mission drift as an intentional adjustment that enabled them to continue to operate during the pandemic. Boards of directors ensured that this shift respected the current rules of the game and their organizational values. Our research offers a constructive interpretation of organizational mission drift, which was reinforced by governance resilience at both individual and overall sectoral levels and made this survival possible.