Jeod Articles

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Features, Facts and Figures of European Cooperative Banking Groups over Recent Business Cycles

This paper complements the existing scarce literature on financial cooperatives in various ways. First, we describe the background and evolution of European Cooperative Banking Groups (ECBGs). Second, we summarize the main reasons for the past disregard and recent revaluation of the cooperative banking model. Third, we empirically investigate to what… Read More

Editorial: Cooperative Banks at a Turning Point?

Many changes occurred in the last years in the economic and social framework make this question quite actual. This special issue argues that the new reality created by the great financial crisis has fostered cooperative banks’ development —at least at local level—and allowed them to re-establish and even strengthen trust… Read More

The Role of Participatory Governance in the EMES Approach to Social Enterprise

This paper emphasizes the importance of participative governance in the EMES approach to social enterprise. The EMES approach is based on three dimensions, rather than a single one, as is common in most Anglo-American definitions of social enterprise. The latter often see social enterprise as a simple phenomenon that can… Read More

Invited Paper: Worker Cooperatives: Good, Sustainable Jobs in the Community

Worker cooperatives are the least well-known part of the cooperative movement. Part of the reason is that the idea of a business run by its employees sounds unrealistic to many people. Yet there are thousands of worker cooperatives and related businesses around the world, including some very large firms. In… Read More

Social Co-operatives: When Social Enterprises Meet the Co-operative Tradition

The emergence of social co-operatives cannot be understood without a more detailed analysis of the worldwide fast-growing interest toward social enterprise and social entrepreneurship since the mid-1990s. Much more than US-based schools of thought, a major European conception of social enterprise actually fits the co-operative tradition, and even more precisely,… Read More

Invited Paper: All firms are cooperatives – and so are governments

To both the scholar and the layman, cooperatives often appear to be something of a sideshow in the world of enterprise organization. Properly understood, however, virtually all private enterprise, and democratic governments as well, exhibit the basic form of a cooperative. As a consequence, the study of cooperatives (in the… Read More

Natural resource management: the role of cooperative institutions and governance

There are two major discourses on cooperatives and cooperative organizations. One deals with cooperatives for product marketing, inputs, credit, housing, consumers and similar voluntary associations. The other focuses on collective action in the area of provision and management of natural resources, which is gaining in importance due to increasing resource… Read More

The contributions of behavioural economics to understanding and advancing the sustainability of worker cooperatives

We characterize how just-selfish workers are incompatible with long-run success in workers’ cooperatives. Emphasizing mutual monitoring as key to cooperatives’ organization design to combat “shirking” we discuss what possible mixes of behavioral types in the membership of a cooperative are compatible with sustainable success. Sustainability depends on social preferences and… Read More

Customer ownership of public utilities: new wine in old bottles

Customer ownership of public utilities is presently a marginal phenomenon in quantitative terms, despite its long history. The first customer-owned cooperatives appeared at the turn of the 19th century mostly in the power and water sectors. Their development was later hindered by the municipalisation of local public services, but today… Read More

Competition rules and the cooperative firm

This paper investigates whether and under what conditions the working of cooperative firms can be affected by competition law or market-enhancing regulations. The nature of collective benefits sought by different types of cooperative enterprises is analysed to show whether and how a tension may arise between the market mechanism and… Read More