Crisis, adaptation and recovery: A phase‐based exploration of Austrian non‐profit organizations during COVID‐19

Abstract The COVID‐19 pandemic has severely impacted the external environment of social service non‐profit organizations (NPOs), resulting in diverse management challenges. Our study investigates how social service NPOs in Austria experienced these challenges and how they developed internal coping mechanisms. We distinguished four phases of the pandemic (March 2020 to February 2021) and conducted interviews with 33 managers of 14 NPOs. Thus, our research contributes to a phase‐oriented view of the impact of COVID‐19. Applying the contingency approach, coping mechanisms are clustered into groups and transferred into a framework of organizational characteristics depending on the changing environment of NPOs. As coping mechanisms, the implementation of new structures and digitalization, the implementation of a task force, leadership, teamwork and communication competencies were found to be essential for the organizations.