Annals of Public and Cooperative Economics最新文献

Although Central European post-communist countries have considerably liberalized energy sectors, privatizations have been poorly implemented establishing legal monopolies and retaining governments' pervasive influence. This study examines the effects of state ownership on productivity and Lerner indices, using a dataset on Central European firms, operating in industries of general interest, from 2009 to 2017. This study contributes to the literature by estimating production functions of energy companies, establishing a link between government ownership, and productivity and Lerner indices, applying continuous measures of state ownership, and evaluating impacts across quantiles. The overall results highlight that state ownership is associated with significant productivity losses, which increase over quantiles, and lower market power.

By relying on province-level data from Italy, this paper empirically studies the factors that correlate with the development of third sector organizations (TSOs) in the Italian territory. Moving beyond traditional explanations of TSOs development based on population heterogeneity theories, our analysis points to the role of public institutions as key driving factors of Italian TSOs development. It specifically suggests that public authorities may shape the development of TSOs through three different, albeit interconnected, institutional dimensions: (1) control of corruption—that is, design and implementation of policies and regulations to prevent corruption and strengthen trust in the relationships between public authorities and TSOs; (2) rule of law—that is, creation of stable legal frameworks to reduce the uncertainty faced by TSOs when collaborating with the public sector and to limit arbitrary decisions by politicians and bureaucrats; (3) government effectiveness—that is, improving governments’ credibility and administrative capacity to provide grants and funds to TSOs for social and public services delivery.

The present study aims to develop and validate a measurement scale for investigating the principle of intercooperation, in order to provide researchers in the field of cooperativism with a valid and reliable measure. To this end, four main steps were followed: conceptual mastery, theoretical validation, semantic validation, and statistical validation. First, a preliminary scale was developed based on a literature review and interviews with 20 representatives of cooperatives and representative organizations. Later, the evaluation was carried out by eight academic judges and analyzed using the Content Validity Coefficient. A pre-test was then carried out with subjects from the population, and subsequently the scale was applied to a sample of 213 cooperatives. Finally, factor analysis was performed with the aim of evaluating convergent and factorial validity as well as individual and construct reliability. Thus, it is proposed that the principle of intercooperation be measured by two different scales. The first, called “Horizontal Intercooperation”, presented a Composite Reliability equal to 0.81 and Average Variance Extracted equal to 0.68. The second, called “Vertical Intercooperation”, presented a Composite Reliability equal to 0.96 and Average Variance Extracted equal to 0.69. After the analyses, the proposed intercooperation scales showed signs of validity and reliability.

The aim of the paper is to extend the knowledge of the measurement of dimensions of social capital in cooperatives. The paper draws on data collected in a survey of 154 members in dairy cooperatives to develop and test composite indicators for measuring dimensions of social capital: structural, relational, and cognitive. Principal component analyses (PCAs) were performed on the data sets of indicators of dimensions of social capital. The Kaiser–Meyer–Olkin measure of sampling adequacy and Bartlett's test of Sphericity supported the appropriateness of performing PCAs. After the extraction of the principal components, intermediate composite indicators were computed for the dimensions of social capital. Finally, the composite indicators were computed as linear weighted aggregations of the intermediate composite indicators. The internal consistency of the composite indicators was verified using Cronbach's alpha. The method provided single, synthetic measures for the dimensions of social capital, which are robust and exhibit construct validity. The paper provided practical knowledge that can be applied to measuring dimensions of social capital in cooperatives.

The rapid development of farmers’ cooperatives in rural China cannot be separated from government support. To ensure the growth of farmers’ cooperatives, the Chinese government uses it as a key performance indicator for its local institutions. Superficially, rural China's cooperative population and membership size witnessed rapid growth during the first decade after the Farmers’ Specialized Cooperatives Law was enacted in 2007; however, such government intervention also leads to non-standard phenomena due to market distortion. Using nationally representative survey data from 504 cooperatives in Jiangsu, Jilin, and Sichuan provinces, this paper provides a reliable estimate of the “shell cooperative” rate around 2014. The empirical study sheds further light on the role of government during the period of rapid but chaotic growth by a subset containing 241 marketing cooperatives. Results show that direct administrative intervention leads to the emergence of many shell cooperatives (approximately 37%). Further study also confirms that task-oriented policy support is only positively associated with the nominal coverage ratio but has no significant relationship with cooperatives’ function. This study provides new insights into the formation of shell cooperatives and suggests that direct administrative intervention may not be a good strategy for promoting the sustainable development of farmers’ cooperatives.

This study focuses on the analysis of the determinants of Spanish cooperatives’ profitability. We inspect several variables, whose influence on firms’ profitability has been verified by prior literature, and we assess whether these results are confirmed in cooperatives. The data span 13 years (2008–20). We approach the analysis including: (i) firm-specific factors, (ii) industry-specific factors, and (iii) location factors. There is a main research question: Are there significant differences in cooperatives’ profitability depending on firm-specific, industry-specific and/or location factors? The results emphasize that firm-specific effects are the most important for cooperatives’ profitability. Summarizing our findings, cooperatives’ profitability is positively affected by size, liquidity, indebtedness, regional specialization in cooperatives, location economies, and lagging profitability, and negatively affected by age and presence in international markets.

This study focuses on the endogenous formation of institutions for the provision of public goods. Institutions that impose a contribution on their members can increase social welfare. However, without powerful executive authority, not all players become institutional members, and those who choose not to join the institution do not contribute to public goods. Endogenous institution formation—for example, international treaties to prevent global warming—may be a solution. This study examines the effect of commitment on endogenous institution formation for solving the public goods problem. We compared two rules in which participants either committed to join or did not join an institution. Under both rules, players who proposed to form an institution could withdraw from it during the formation process. Under the breakaway rule, the institution can be formed even if some proposers withdraw, whereas under the unanimity rule, the institution is never formed if at least one proposer withdraws. Thus, the unanimity rule required the commitment of proposers for institution formation. Our experimental result showed that the unanimity rule increased the contribution to public goods, whereas the breakaway rule did not. Our findings suggest that the commitment to become a member of an institution is essential for endogenous institution formation.

This paper investigates the linkages between pressure from stakeholders, eco-innovation and environmental performance considering the moderating role of being a cooperative. Using survey data from 239 Spanish companies we developed a model of structural equations to verify the relationship between the variables. We show that the implementation of eco-innovations, driven by pressure from internal stakeholders, leads to better environmental performance. In addition, our results strengthen previous empirical evidence about the compromise of cooperatives with the community, workers, and the environment: they are influenced by both internal and external stakeholders in the implementation of eco-innovations, while limited liability companies are influenced only by internal stakeholders.

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.