During the post‐Socialist transition period, the Bulgarian irrigation facilities deteriorated to a large extent and no longer meet the needs of the new landowner and agricultural production structure. The Bulgarian government therefore enacted two new laws to encourage collective action and to establish water user associations in order to achieve sustainable water management. In this article, we will question the frequent argument that water user associations could easily be established in Bulgaria, because they are rooted in the water syndicates. The analysis of the historical cooperative movement in Bulgaria shows that the water syndicates were enforced by a top‐down approach and thus these pseudo cooperatives do not represent collective action and hence do not serve as examples for the establishment of water user associations. Besides, empirical findings from village case studies reveal that limited collective memory exists today about former water syndicates' rules‐in‐use and patterns of action. We will explain this breach of tradition by the migration from villages to cities, the suppression of pre‐communist so‐called capitalist behaviour, and the length of the socialist period.

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Decades after the establishment of the first modern agricultural cooperative in Bulgaria, we are observing a continuous increase in its number, then we see a decline until nowadays. In periods, when the members’ satisfaction is higher, we notice increasing of the number of cooperatives and vice versa. In each period the relation between members’ satisfaction, cooperative values and principles and existing and operating governance structures differs seriously. We identified three historical periods for this development: pre socialism, socialism and post socialism. This paper is concentrated on the measuring the members satisfaction and to show the potential of using the new technologies (digitalization) for increasing the members satisfaction. For this purpose, we will try to evaluate the influence and application of the governance structure and cooperative values and principles on members’ satisfaction. It our research we argue that the members’ satisfaction is higher when the governance structure of the cooperative fits with the cooperative values and principles. For this fit we stand that the digitalization can contribute to the recovery of members involvement and transparency. The methodology of the research comprises qualitative and quantitative methods. The qualitative method includes in depth interviews, observations and narrative analysis. We use Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) as instrument for quantitative valuation of governance structures according to the cooperative values and principles as a criterion and will use it to measure member satisfaction in each historical period.

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Strategic decision-making in organizations is related to assessing the impact of many factors. Often such decisions are made intuitively by the management, or on the basis of its experience and expectations for the development of the sector in which they operate and the market. The use of multi-criteria analysis methods can help to achieve objectivity in making these decisions, as well as to quantify the various alternatives faced by the business. A barrier to the application of multicriteria analysis is its relative complexity, especially in the context of small and medium-sized agricultural enterprises. This publication presents two farm management models that are evaluated and analyzed using the AHP and V-AHP methods. The presented article provides a relatively simple toolkit which farmers can use to make management decisions for their farm.