Journal of Co-operative Organization and Management最新文献

This paper investigates whether and how financial and administrative controllers of the Ministry of Social Affairs and Labor (MOSAL) decrease agency costs in consumer cooperative societies (co-ops) in Kuwait. It hypothesizes that MOSAL controllers are effective monitors in reducing agency costs. The study employs a multivariate regression model and calculates the t-values using Roger’s robust standard errors, correcting for co-op clusters due to the potential cross-sectional correlation and autocorrelation of the error terms to test a sample of 929 observations for 59 consumer cooperative societies from 2000–2018. The empirical results support the hypothesis. Further tests show that low-performing co-ops have lower agency costs. However, the presence of the financial and administrative controllers has no effect on agency costs in high-performing co-ops. Also, the effect that MOSAL controllers have on agency costs varies among co-ops. This study complements a line of research on co-op governance and adds to the empirical evidence on the association of corporate governance and agency costs. It also helps understand how regulators influence management and board discretion to safeguard co-op shareholder rights. Further, it explores an important sector and analyzes a unique, comprehensive, and rarely tested dataset.

How collective organisations can provide smallholders access to modern markets is widely discussed. Smallholder farmers collectively gain economies of scale, access to technology, pool their capital resources to invest in value-added activities and gain bargaining power. Different forms of collective organisations have emerged around the developing world, where smallholder farmers are predominant. Nonetheless, information about the organisational attributes of different collective organisations is scant. This study aims to analyse and compare the organisational attributes of two forms of collective organisations namely, Cooperatives and Farmer Companies (FCs). A range of organisational attributes (ownership, control, benefit, governance, marketing, and external factors) of cooperatives and FCs in the Sri Lankan rice sector are analysed and compared. This study employed qualitative methodology, using face to face semi-structured interviews. Results revealed that cooperatives and FCs have similar control and benefit attributes and different ownership and governance attributes. These FCs accepted external investments while the cooperatives accepted products from non-members. The FCs were more specialised in the specific type of rice grain sold to regional and specific markets. Both types of collective organisations had received substantial governmental financial support, however cooperatives were also strongly influenced by external governmental departments and exempted from tax.

One area where cooperatives supposedly differ from corporate capitalism is their higher level of concern for the community beyond its membership base. ICA seventh principle is thus “concern for community.” Philippine cooperative law mandates cooperatives to allot at least three percent of their yearly net surplus for community development funds (CDF). This study presents how cooperatives build and use their CDF and determine their constraints in conducting community projects. It used data from a mailed survey and annual performance reports. Findings indicate high compliance in allocating for CDF but a relatively low actual utilization rate, especially among small cooperatives. Actual CDF spending is highly positively associated with total assets, net surplus, cooperative size, and the total number of cooperative members. Common projects implemented are mostly in the area of education, health, and the environment. Perceived challenges in implementing community development projects include limited funds, lack of member-participation, poor coordination with partner organizations, and lack of a concrete plan for using CDF. The study recommends strengthened support for cooperatives to plan for intentional CDF use through capacity building on project planning and management, more functional monitoring and evaluation of development plans, and social audit reports, and further impact research.

The existence of cooperative organizations in today’s business environment, particularly in agriculture, signals their continued ability to provide value to their member owners. However, due largely to data limitations, we know very little about the monetary value of ownership held by members and how value changes across members of differing characteristics. Through a discrete choice experiment with more than 200 dairy farmers in the United States, we examine these issues explicitly for dairy marketing cooperatives that purchase their members’ milk and process it into finished dairy products. Results suggest that dairy farmers, on aggregate, are willing to accept lower per hundredweight compensation, 2.3% of the average milk price, to be cooperative members relative to selling to independent handlers. Results also suggest dairy farmers actively consider the industry wide impacts within pricing offers on preferences for other milk pricing attributes. The inclusion of demographic covariates highlights preferences important to understanding heterogeneous member interests and, thus, informing improved cooperative governance strategies and board decision making to address them.

Organisations engage in coopetition, the simultaneous pursuit of competitive and cooperative activities, because of various environmental factors. The concept of coopetition continues to gain attention as global competition increases. However, the analysis of the influence of institutional elements on coopetition has been limited. This study bridges this gap. We use a case study to examine the coopetition framework among competing Japanese airlines formed to negotiate with major institutional elements: a monopolistic supplier and a government regulatory authority. First, this study identifies the mechanisms through which institutions promote coopetition. The findings point to coercive isomorphism and external hazard as influential institutional mechanisms; through coercive isomorphism, the shared benefits increase, and the cost of cooperation is reduced; through external hazard, organisations are encouraged to unite, and coopetition is promoted. Second, the study identifies the mechanisms through which organisations in coopetition enhance their bargaining power. Specifically, we find two sources of enhanced bargaining power: intensified pressure as a larger group and improved persuasiveness with consensus. These findings have important implications for the theory and management of co-operative organisations, such as for the interaction between co-operatives and institutions, since the coopetition framework we analysed has characteristics close to the values and principles of co-operatives.

Co-operative enterprises differ from other organizations since their values are influenced by historical co-operative principles set out by their pioneers, which leads to the establishment of a uniform value core across co-operatives that operate in different sectors. Despite their dense constitutive roots, co-operatives adapt to their environment as a means to survive and thrive, which influences their appearance vis-á-vis members and customers. Until now, an empirical comparison of co-operatives across sectors remained unexplored despite various sources that suggest that a uniform co-operative identity for co-operatives of different industries may exist. This article fills this gap by uncovering parallels and deviations in the perception of values of credit co-operatives, housing co-operatives as well as a mixed general group of co-operatives. To this end, a principal component analysis (PCA) is applied to condense the set of values of the co-operative industries to underlying factors. The findings uncover that the perception of co-operatives of different sectors can be reduced to congruent value cores, which for each sector comprise the subsequent three components: “responsible business conduct”, “regionality and tradition” and “economic soundness”. Furthermore, Austrian co-operatives differentiate themselves from other legal forms with regard to a number of characteristics that belong to these components.

This research studied how stakeholders organize themselves in order to collectively manage the presence or absence of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) at the level of agricultural regions. Using case studies, we show that cooperatives have been able to bundle, coordinate, or influence all stakeholders. We show that these new methods of territorial governance require cooperative relations among cooperatives in direct competition with each other on the market, and a type of "collectivism" on a larger scale. The scale is no longer that of mutualism among farmers but of mutualism among competing cooperatives. This new agricultural collectivism permits cooperatives to reinforce their bargaining power and act as a nexus of relationships between the different stakeholders in the supply chain. This competing cooperatives’ unions enabled a multistakeholders’ dialogues and a self-organizations of the agricultural production areas.

Agricultural cooperatives in the United States are increasing in size while decreasing in number due to consolidation. This study examines the impact of size and specialization on the mean and variance of financial performance of agricultural cooperatives using a system of equations (3SLS) approach. Return on equity is a measure of financial performance and the variance of return on equity is a measure of risk. Risk had a positive impact on the mean financial performance of the cooperatives. The impact of risk is estimated to vary based on the diversity of products handled by the cooperatives as most cooperatives received the majority of incomes from grain and farm-input sales. In addition, profitability, the debt to asset ratio, and size had positive impacts on mean financial performance. Size had a positive impact on financial performance indicating that larger agricultural cooperatives benefit from economies of scale. Diversified cooperatives, particularly small-sized cooperatives, tended to have less variability in financial performance over the 2005-2014 period.

Farmer co-operatives in the United States in general outlive other types of business organisations, yet the overall population has been declining for decades. We address the paradox with survival analysis of 2260 farmer co-operatives in the United States from 2004 through 2017. Using a competing risks scenario, we estimate the cumulative incidence of (i) mergers and acquisitions and (ii) liquidations and dissolutions in relation to demographic, financial, and strategic firm-level characteristics. We observe both expected relationships, such as the high incidence of liquidations and dissolutions in case of high leverage, as well as unexpected relationships, including the relatively high incidence of mergers and acquisitions among larger farmer co-operatives. Based on our results, we advise academics to continue to conceptualize the failure of farmer co-operatives as a multi-dimensional construct. However, we also recommend an alternative perspective of mergers and acquisitions as survival strategies as opposed to exit strategies.

Cooperatives’ unique characteristics can lead to different ways of understanding performance. This study aims to comprehend the concept of performance within the smallholder cooperative setting and according to the pragmatic understanding of top management. This study employs a qualitative research design that involves structured interviews with representatives of each studied cooperative’s board. Six informants were selected through a purposive sampling method. The findings indicate that the definition of performance revolves around the dimensions of efficiency (i.e. doing things right) and effectiveness (i.e. doing the right things). This operationalisation of the dimensions fits with the identity of cooperatives. Smallholders’ cooperative performance is summarised as the ability to conduct the process of basic management tasks in an efficient and effective manner as well as conform to the expectations of its members. The originality of this study lies in its attempt to investigate the concept of performance using the pragmatic understanding of top management in line with the mental model. The findings add value to the current literature on organisational performance (OP), offering fresh insights derived from a practical point of view that take into consideration the nature of cooperative entities.