Jeod Articles

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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

Agricultural cooperatives

The economic nature of agricultural cooperatives is explained by means of a logical continuation of the organizational economics rationale for family farms. The traditional explanations of the importance of family farms is discussed, and embedded in a broader framework which considers their transaction cost-economizing effect and their limitations in terms… Read More

The potential of co-operatives during the current recession; theorizing comparative advantage

This paper asks how effective are co-operatives at surviving economic recession, and whether they can grow at the expense of investor-owned businesses and provide an alternative business model that is fairer, more stable and less risky. The paper begins by providing historical evidence concerning the resilience of co-operatives during economic… Read More

The Hidden Impact of Cooperative Membership on Quality Management: A Case Study from the Dairy Belt of Addis Ababa

During the last decade Ethiopia has been witnessing a return to agricultural cooperatives as means to unleash the national agri-food market. Using primary bio-economic data from Ethiopia, this study evaluates the impact of cooperative membership on milk production, productivity, quality and safety. To do so we compare the performance of… Read More

The Motivations of Economic Behavior: the Case of Cooperative Credit

This paper investigates the motivation behind economic behaviour in the cooperative credit movement, and some of the inherent problems. In particular, the following hypotheses are analysed: the possibility of maintaining the principles of reciprocity and participation in the case of rapid growth beyond the original group and area; the role… Read More