Journal of Co-operative Organization and Management最新文献

Agricultural cooperatives have been extremely successful at producing and bringing food to billions of consumers around the world. Arguably, such success is caused by their superb ability to constantly adapt to the changing needs of their members and consumers. They do this by slightly modifying (tinkering) or completely altering (reinventing) their organizational design. This issue has not been studied in the context of agricultural cooperatives in former Soviet countries. Given the rising importance of agricultural cooperatives in such countries, however, understanding how cooperative adapt to the evolving preferences of their members and customers becomes of utter importance for both cooperative practitioners and policy makers. The current paper addresses the abovementioned knowledge gap. In particular, it identifies the ownership and governance models adopted by Estonian agricultural cooperatives, and provide key insights into how these organizations adapt to the changing needs of their members, consumers, and their external environment. Estonian agricultural cooperatives exhibit little experimentation with non-traditional ownership and governance models. This is due to the lack of technical expertise in the country, the relatively small size of the country’s agricultural cooperatives, and their predominantly defensive strategies. Similarly to other European countries, tinkering is of outmost importance for Estonian agricultural cooperatives.

While in many European countries co-operative entrepreneurship manages to fulfill its economic and social functions successfully, in Croatia a large majority of almost 1200 registered co-operatives struggle hard to accomplish in demanding market conditions while sustaining their social dimension and few succeed. Only 19% of co-operatives accounted for 96% of overall income earned by Croatian co-operatives in 2015. We critically examine obstacles related to external legal, policy, infrastructural and other conditions that are either insufficient, completely missing or, if existent, adversely affect co-operatives. The obstacles were indicated by co-operatives themselves in a qualitative research project conducted between September 2017 and March 2018. We offer two possible explanations for the existence of the obstacles: one concerning immaturity of the Croatian institutional system, the other related to cronyism pervading the system. We see bottom-up integration of the co-operative sector, based on the principle of co-operation among co-operatives, as the best way of moving forward.

The annual demand for beef has been increasing in Indonesia. One of the government strategies to develop cattle production and empower cattle farmers is by developing farmer groups to support farmers and promote entrepreneurship. This article explores the work of a farmer group called BPWU which employs internal and external social networking to empower farmers in the villages. The research questions are the following: (1) What are the strategies used by BPWU to develop its business? and (2) What are the impacts of BPWU existence in providing social changes to its surrounding population? The data were collected from July 2015 to December 2016 using interviews, observations, and focus group discussion. Based on the findings, the farmers’ livelihoods have improved because of the building of social relations internally and externally. The internal social relations were developed among cattle farmer groups related to BPWU, whereas the external social relations were built with local residents, educational institutions, officials of the Animal Husbandry of Tuban Regency, officials of the Ministry of Agriculture, financial institutions, and cattle traders from various areas. BPWU has managed to open work opportunities, impart a technological change in beef-cattle cultivation, increase the beef availability, and contribute to rural development.

Although purely economic (conventional) reasons play a significant role in the development and performance of (agricultural) cooperatives; so do other (non-conventional) factors. A comprehensive assessment of co-operatives therefore requires an examination of non-conventional factors, in addition to the conventional factors. Three such non-conventional factors identified in the literature are 1) commitment, 2) heterogeneity and 3) social capital. Commitment is important for agricultural co-operatives because one pre-requisite for successful agricultural co-operatives is that farmer-members are willing to supply the co-operative with raw products, capital and managerial inputs. In this research affective, continuance, normative and other aspects of member commitment are examined. Heterogeneity is an important source of concern for co-operatives due to its impact on cohesiveness and collective decision making. This study used characteristics associated with the farmer-member and the farm-business to examine heterogeneity. It has been suggested that the social capital paradigm is the common denominator for all explanations and theories on co-operative formation and development. A modified version of the six dimensions’ framework used by the World Bank to assess social capital was used in this study. Based on this theoretical underpinning, a Three Dimensional Conceptual Framework, that encapsulates commitment, heterogeneity and social capital is developed and described.

Mining Co-operatives wield significant influence over the mining sector. These organizations have been getting increasing importance to support diggers through initiatives and policies to improve small-scale mining activities. In spite of the importance of cooperatives to the local communities, studies on their role and contribution towards sustainable business practices in the sector are still scarce. This paper investigates the scenario of mining Co-operatives in Brazil through a set of interviews to the managers of these Co-operatives, which allowed to conclude on the relevance of the sector to establish a sustainable network into the mining sector in the country. The results indicated some key concerns related to lack of awareness towards cooperative principles and environmental impacts and the reduced engagement with local community. The need to improve knowledge and academic background of both diggers and managers emerged as a major challenge to be overcome to ensure that cooperative principles are effectively put in place and guide the cooperatives towards sustainable development

Managerial succession in small and medium size businesses is accompanied by strategic change. When succession planning is absent, firms encounter difficulties in selecting plans that facilitate commercial viability. This paper examines the effects of succession planning constraints in the context of small asset credit unions. Although these experience continuation of the business, executive succession causes significant changes in strategic direction, capital structure, and employee performance. Evidence of these changes reinforce how board policies and operating procedures ought to be developed in a collaborative manner to support executive change.

This paper consists of a review of the literature on co-operatives in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). It provides a synthesis of past knowledge on this topic and goes on to suggest, on the basis of this synthesis, that there is a critical knowledge gap in the current literature which consists of the fact that the importance of social movements doesn’t appear to have been considered by scholars involved in the study of co-operatives in the DRC. Given this finding, the paper calls for a re-thinking of the history of co-operatives in the DRC in order to determine whether the current DRC co-operative sector has its origins in social movements or not, and it also briefly discusses the implications of these scenarios. The importance of this paper derives from the need for solutions to the problems of widespread poverty and underdevelopment in the DRC, and from the fact that co-operatives are viewed as important vehicles for community development which can offer a solution to these problems.

This paper examines peasant-led agricultural cooperative formation in Brazil from a political economy perspective. It takes as a point of reference the Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra, or Landless Rural Workers Movement (MST). The paper identifies the MST’s main periods of cooperative formation within their particular contexts. Each of these periods oriented and, eventually, reoriented the MST’s overall cooperative efforts. The MST linked agrarian reform and agricultural cooperativism in order to advance political and economic democracy. While the MST’s pursuit of political and economic democracy took place within unfavorable conditions, the MST was able to build a transformative cooperative project capable of reducing structural poverty, enhancing political citizenship, and promoting environmental stewardship. In spite of these achievements, the long-term sustainability of this cooperative project depends significantly on the MST’s capacity to overcome structural barriers and, most importantly, obtain long-term support from state and non-state actors.

International cooperative values and principles are guidelines that could lead cooperatives towards greater gender equality in the decision-making process. Stimulated by the interest in cooperatives and by the growing demand for advocating a faster increase in the presence of chairwomen in boardrooms, this research aims to analyse the impact of the gender of the cooperative president in some variables related to financial and employment ratios, corporate governance and other characteristics of the organization in Spain. Information about the major Spanish cooperative entities has been collected and analyzed to carry out the empirical study. We find that cooperatives with higher liquidity ratio, higher number of employees, higher percentage of female employees, higher employee costs divided by operating revenue ratio, lower indebtedness, and fewer years since the appointment of the president have a higher probability of belonging to the group of cooperatives with a board chaired by a woman. Cooperatives headed by women exhibit a higher ratio of staffing costs to operating revenues, which could indicate an increased intensity of cooperative principles and values related with the primacy of the economic welfare of workers over the economic benefits.

U.S. farmer cooperatives are increasing in size but decreasing in number because of merger and acquisition (M&A) activity. However, the empirical literature on cooperative M&A activity is scarce and has only considered capital structure characteristics as possible explanations. We contribute to the existing literature by exploring the relationship of capital capacity, spatial competition, and strategic orientation to M&A activity by the largest 1000 U.S. farmer cooperatives in the 2014–2016 period. Using probit and negative binomial regressions, we find equity constraints did not inform recent M&A activity in the U.S. farmer cooperative sector. Rather, we find M&A activity increased in size and decreased in leverage. In addition, we find farmer cooperatives with larger market shares are less likely to pursue M&A activity, but proximity to other farmer cooperatives in the same sector increases the probability of external growth behavior. Also, farmer cooperatives which pursue differentiation are less likely to grow externally, suggesting recent M&As have been motivated by tangible as opposed to intangible asset acquisitions.