Annals of Public and Cooperative Economics最新文献

Customers, civil organizations, the media, and society demand that companies behave in ways beyond regulatory requirements concerning social and environmental issues. Therefore, companies are striving to adapt to these new requirements and to express their commitment to stakeholders through their Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) strategy. The values and principles of cooperatives make them ideal for responsible business management within the framework of CSR. Almeria is a province in southeastern Spain and it is one of the areas with the highest concentration of agribusiness in Europe. This paper aims to empirically verify whether the CSR orientation of agricultural cooperatives in this province are greater than that of other companies because of the application of these principles. Or, if globalization and competition is pushing these organizations to abandon their principles and values while losing their distinctive identity. A cluster analysis was applied to a representative sample of 107 fruit and vegetable production-commercialization companies, and this included five dimensions of study applying the stakeholder theory: partners, employees, customers, farmers, and the environment. According to their legal form, we concluded that these entities do not significantly differ in their corporate social responsibility strategy. The Mann-Whitney nonparametric analysis indicates that only the employee dimension shows significant differences depending on the legal form.

Most social enterprises (SEs) face constant challenges to scale up their social impact, especially for those in transforming societies such as China, where the ecosystem of SEs is still immature. Previous literature has examined how and why SEs select specific scaling strategies; however, the scaling performance of different scaling strategies has rarely been empirically explored. Therefore, this study takes a hypothesis-testing quantitative approach, for the first time, to investigate how different scaling strategies contribute divergently to scaling performance and how their contributions are subject to the moderating role of SEs’ organizational capabilities. The findings show that the three types of scaling strategies positively contribute to scaling performance, and the magnitude and significance of their influences descend from knowledge dissemination, through organizational growth, to contractual partnerships. Meanwhile, when SEs have a higher level of stakeholder engagement capabilities or strategic management capabilities, knowledge dissemination has a stronger effect on scaling performance. Conversely, when SEs have a lower level of marketing capabilities or strategic management capabilities, organizational growth has a stronger effect on scaling performance. These results offer practical implications, suggesting that SEs selecting knowledge dissemination as a scaling strategy should prioritize advancing their stakeholder engagement capabilities and strategic management capabilities.

Membership in agricultural cooperatives may influence intra-household decisions regarding the division of household labor. However, the linkages between cooperative membership and labor allocation remain unexplored. To fill this gap, we examine the impact of cooperative membership on off-farm work decisions of couples engaged in farming, using data collected from 595 banana farmers in China. The recursive bivariate probit model and endogenous-treatment Poisson regression model are employed to address the self-selection bias inherent in cooperative membership. The results show that cooperative membership increases the probability of participating in off-farm work by 38% for husbands and 31% for wives. Having large households reduces the probability of husbands but increases that of wives working off-farm. Cooperative membership is also associated with more time spent on off-farm work and higher earnings for both husbands and wives. Our findings point to the potential of agricultural cooperatives to increase farm couples’ off-farm employment, thus increasing household income and quality of life.

Agri-food cooperatives allow farmers to improve their competitiveness and bargaining power. However, the specificities of their organizational form, in which owners are decision makers, suppliers, and clients, open the door to conflicts of interest. Members’ opportunism comes in the aftermath of this and adversely affects cooperatives’ performance. Hence, knowing the antecedents of these undesirable opportunistic behaviors is an important management concern. This study analyzes the factors that promote cooperative members opportunism by exploring the differences between memberships of first-tier cooperatives and second-tier cooperatives. To this end, an ordinary least squares linear regression model with interaction terms was estimated. The results show that in the case of first-tier cooperatives, environmental uncertainty, members’ heterogeneity, and the cooperative's market orientation increase members’ opportunism, while members’ dependence on the cooperative, long-term orientation of the relationship, and members’ market orientation reduce it. For second-tier cooperatives, our results reveal that cooperative market orientation increases members’ opportunism, while members’ market orientation reduces it. Moreover, we find that members’ dependence on cooperatives, long-term orientation, and environmental uncertainty have different effects on opportunism in each type of membership.

One of the main challenges inclusive urban entrepreneurial ecosystems (IUEEs) face is balancing their organizations' two opposing individual and cooperative activities. The closest concept in the management of dual structures is the so-called organizational ambidexterity (OA). We refer to it as “Individual–Collective Organizational Ambidexterity”. Thus, it is necessary to explore factors affecting the OA of the IUEE's organizations to benefit simultaneously from individual and collective potentials and form successfully. To do so, a model was designed by examining the factors affecting the OA capacity of the IUEE's organizations. The statistical population was organizations involved in the IUEE of 36 cities in Kermanshah province, one of the poorest provinces in IRAN (N = 2041). 328 valid responses were collected as statistical sample based on the sampling table of Krejcie and Morgan (from 1970), and through the proportional stratified sampling method. The main instrument was a questionnaire. Data were analyzed by SPSS version 26 and Smartpls3 software. The results showed among the factors studied, diversity, learning orientation, and promotion of entrepreneurial culture had a positive and significant effect on OA. Networking capacities and commitment to collaboration in the ecosystem did not significantly affect OA. OA also had a positive and significant effect on the performance of IUEE. The discussion eventually suggests the future directions of the research. The findings of this study can be used to develop IUEEs and achieve entrepreneurial cities.

Forest farmers’ organizations (FFOs) have recently gained scholarly attention as a collective action instrument to upgrade value chains. However, insights into possible business models and organizational forms of FFOs remain fragmented. This study thus aimed to co-create FFO business models in order to assess the business models in the context of the regulatory framework and the value chain upgrading theory. The Input–Output scheme and the Business Model Canvas (BMC) were merged to create an analytical lens. Participatory workshops with two farmers’ organizations, each in Ethiopia and Tanzania, were conducted and triangulated with ten focus group discussions and 25 key informant interviews. The co-created business models reflected the grassroots entrepreneurial potential of smallholders to envision FFOs. The gaps requiring external support, namely the know-how in accessing microfinance, silvicultural practices, and entrepreneurship, were revealed. We argue that the transformation from a farmers’ organization to an FFO enables wood value chain upgrading. Diversifying wood with non-wood products is key for FFOs. Regardless of how the regulatory framework shapes external support, the local government plays a pivotal role in facilitating the connection between FFOs and (non-)governmental support actors. Through this research, we develop suggestions for further empirical studies and offer several recommendations for decision-makers.

A central collective action issue in agricultural cooperatives is the free-rider problem, a prevalent form of which arises when members systematically side-sell to competing chain actors. Despite the plethora of studies on side-selling's antecedents, little is known about side-selling's actual consequences, particularly from the standpoint of cooperative members. In two studies, we aim to deliver a member-based assessment of side-selling's influence on critical cooperative benefits and explore possible solutions. In the first study, with survey data from 128 members of four fruit cooperatives in Greece, we show that side-selling has a negative effect on perceived cooperative benefits, even in the presence of other collective action issues (e.g., the influence costs problem). In the same study, we posit and demonstrate that side-selling's aversive impact on cooperative benefits can be appeased when members think that their cooperative's transparency regarding cooperative activities is high. In the second study, with interview data from 20 members, we find that different punitive (e.g., expelling members) and collaborative (e.g., fostering trust) solutions are considered effective. Accordingly, our article advances extant knowledge of an issue that strikes at the heart of cooperative activity and offers valuable insights to cooperative decision-makers seeking to confront it.

We present a simple agency model with a monopolist lender and an individual facing an occupational choice between entering the labor market as a wage worker and starting a self-managed business. We show that, when the reservation utility is relatively low, the lender may not want to offer any credit contract, so the individual is forced to become a wage worker out of necessity, whereas when the reservation utility is high, the bank may find it profitable to finance the investment project, and the individual can choose to become an entrepreneur out of opportunity.

What drives the productivity dynamics of infrastructure companies? Using a panel of firms in 14 countries, we study total factor productivity (TFP) enhancers of utility and network services companies. We find that moving TFP closer to the technological frontier drives productivity growth at higher speeds in Asian countries than in European countries. We also find that financial leverage exerts a positive effect on TFP growth for larger infrastructure firms and that more financially developed countries utilize economies of scale through better use of financial resources. Large utility and transportation companies display a higher rate of TFP growth, indicating that a competition policy to encourage M&As would be prudent for the utility/transportation sectors to maximize economies of scale. In contrast, we find diseconomies of scale for energy companies in some countries. Moreover, young network firms improve TFP growth faster than their peers in countries with fewer product market regulations. Therefore, policies should remove entry barriers while facilitating the departure of old and low-productivity firms from network markets. Finally, policymakers should offer well-targeted fiscal incentives for intangible investments to boost TFP because the accumulation of intangible assets such as digital technology promotes more scale economies through network effects.

Context: Different from general agriculture, tobacco agriculture in China adopts the production mode of farmers’ cooperatives to instruct farmers to engage in tobacco agricultural production under a policy of tobacco control. In addition to providing convenience for industry technical standardization, the policy goal aims to cope with the impact of production risk shocks and ultimately ensure the modernization and transformation of the tobacco industry and the stability of income of farmers.

Objective: This study intends to explore the influence mechanism of the different degrees of cooperation and participation in cooperatives on the income of tobacco farmers from the perspective of risk shocks.

Methods: Through the quantitative methods of the OLS regression model, hierarchical regression model and moderation model, this paper analyzes the data of 393 farmers engaged in tobacco agricultural production in Shaanxi Province obtained from survey and empirically analyzes the relationship between the degree of cooperation and participation in cooperatives and income. Interaction terms between risk shocks and cooperation are introduced to verify the regulatory effect of participation in tobacco farmers’ professional cooperatives on mitigating risk shocks and improving agricultural income.

Results and conclusions: The results show that while risk shocks, including natural risks, market risks and policy risks, negatively affect the income of tobacco farmers, the degree of cooperation and participation has a significant positive effect on the income of tobacco farmers, and the degree of peasant households’ participation in the professional cooperative of tobacco farmers as a moderator variable has a regulatory effect on mitigating the impact of risk shocks on the income of tobacco farmers. The mechanism of action is that tobacco farmers participate in cooperatives to a higher degree, which can further promote the association of farmers and jointly resist risk shocks by reducing production costs, improving the technical level, and strengthening risk prevention and other measures to improve the income level.

Significance: It would be helpful to encourage tobacco farmers to take the initiative to participate in the daily management-related affairs and decisions of cooperatives, strengthen technical training, obey cooperative management, and actively respond to cooperative policies to effectively resist risk shocks and stabilize farmers’ income level and family welfare.