No abstract

This study explores to which extent the members' assessment of their cooperatives' degree of success are related to various member attributes, with special reference to the members' perception of their participation in the governance of the cooperatives. Three categories of member attributes are identified: Satisfaction with the profitability of farm operations, Age, and Experience from board work. The cooperatives' degree of success is measured as members' commitment towards cooperatives, and members' trust in the board of directors.The data originates from a mail survey among Swedish farmers. A total of 2,250 farmers received a questionnaire. The response rate was 52%.The results indicate differences in members' cooperative commitment and their trust towards directors to be due to farm operations profitability, age and experience as directors. After adding members' perception of their participation in the governance as a covariate, most of the other differences are explained by this variable. Age is still to some extent associated with trust towards directors, as older farmers have less trust in directors.

During the last 20 years many traditionally organized agricultural cooperatives have been forced to abandon their business form. Explanations have been put forward, comprising a variety of economic and sociological theories. The present study suggests that the social capital paradigm may add explanatory power when analyzing this development. It is claimed that the problems are due to the members having increasingly little trust in the cooperatives and in each other. The cooperatives' decision makers have no instruments for estimating how much social capital is lost when they pursue strategies of vertical and horizontal integration. Therefore, they do not consider this loss in their calculations. Thus, the problems caused by the cooperatives' vaguely defined property rights are becoming increasingly serious. This reasoning is summarized into a model, which is influenced by the consumer choice model.

Building on recent advances in cooperative literature and practice, we conceive two key organizational features of cooperatives: cooperative structure~in terms of control, ownership, and cost0 pricing policies resulting in traditional and re-engineered co-ops! as well as entrepreneurial cooperative firm culture+ Then we conceptualize and test the effect of these organizational features on the market orientation and performance of the cooperative firm relying on a sample of Dutch co-ops+ We cannot establish a systematic influence of the cooperative structure; however, a significant influence of individualized member ownership on performance and of cost0pricing policies on market orientation has been found+ Entrepreneurial firm culture has a significant effect on both market orientation and performance+ @EconLit citations: L200, M310, Q130+#

According to social capital theory, small cooperatives with simple business operations have more social capital in their membership than large, complex cooperatives. The geographical and social proximity among members, and between members and leadership, fosters social capital. This proposition is investigated empirically using data from member surveys in three Swedish farm supply and grain marketing cooperatives that vary greatly in size, from about 36,000 to 1600 and 150 members. The findings strongly support the view that the smaller the cooperative, the higher the social capital, expressed in terms of members' involvement, trust, satisfaction, and loyalty. [EconLit citations: A130; P130; Q130]