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Page 1 of 2

The Cooperative Business Movement, 1950 to the Present
  • Edited by Patrizia Battilani, Harm G. Schröter
  • Published online:
    05 September 2012
    Print publication:
    27 August 2012
  • The United Nations declared 2012 the year of cooperatives, emphasizing that there is an alternative to privately owned firms. While greed and mismanagement have caused world financial and economic crises, co-ops offer another type of business for economic activities that is less exposed to aggressive capitalism. This book provides a problem-oriented overview of the development of cooperatives over the last fifty years. The global study addresses the major challenges cooperatives face, such as the organizational innovations introduced to acquire necessary risk-capital and implement growth-related strategies, the wave of demutualization in developed nations and their ability to construct an original consumer politics. The contributors to this volume discuss the successes and failures of the cooperatives and ask whether they are an outdated model of enterprise. They document a wave of foundations of new co-ops, new forms of collaboration between them and a growing trend toward globalization.

  • Chapter 6 - Demutualization and Its Problems

  • from Section 1 - Cooperative Issues in a Global Overview
  • Edited by Patrizia Battilani, Università di Bologna, Harm G. Schröter, Universitetet i Bergen, Norway
  • Book:
    The Cooperative Business Movement, 1950 to the Present
    Published online:
    05 September 2012
    Print publication:
    27 August 2012, pp 150-172

  • Summary

    This chapter addresses the demutualization process in a historical perspective and provides some explanations for its acceleration during the last two decades, as well as its slowdown after the 2008 financial crisis. It lists five clusters of reasons for demutualization: organizational isomorphism; cultural reasons; expropriation by managers; political preferences; and inefficiency or lack of growth perspectives. Connecting the cultural transformation that accompanied and supported privatization with the institutional isomorphism analysis, one could conclude that demutualization occurred where the new ideas of increased competition spread both quickly and deeply. During the seventies and the eighties, many of the cross-sectional studies of mutual and stock financial institutions pointed out the inefficiency of the mutual enterprises. The legal framework played a crucial role not only in allowing or interdicting demutualization, but also in creating an environment that makes demutualization appealing.

  • Appendix I - Statement on the Cooperative Identity

  • Edited by Patrizia Battilani, Università di Bologna, Harm G. Schröter, Universitetet i Bergen, Norway
  • Book:
    The Cooperative Business Movement, 1950 to the Present
    Published online:
    05 September 2012
    Print publication:
    27 August 2012, pp 277-278

  • Summary

    This chapter addresses the demutualization process in a historical perspective and provides some explanations for its acceleration during the last two decades, as well as its slowdown after the 2008 financial crisis. It lists five clusters of reasons for demutualization: organizational isomorphism; cultural reasons; expropriation by managers; political preferences; and inefficiency or lack of growth perspectives. Connecting the cultural transformation that accompanied and supported privatization with the institutional isomorphism analysis, one could conclude that demutualization occurred where the new ideas of increased competition spread both quickly and deeply. During the seventies and the eighties, many of the cross-sectional studies of mutual and stock financial institutions pointed out the inefficiency of the mutual enterprises. The legal framework played a crucial role not only in allowing or interdicting demutualization, but also in creating an environment that makes demutualization appealing.

  • Conclusion: The Decisive Factors of Cooperatives’ Future – Their Nature, Longevity, Role, and Environment

  • from Section 2 - Selected Core Issues of Cooperative Enterprise in a Historical Perspective
  • Edited by Patrizia Battilani, Università di Bologna, Harm G. Schröter, Universitetet i Bergen, Norway
  • Book:
    The Cooperative Business Movement, 1950 to the Present
    Published online:
    05 September 2012
    Print publication:
    27 August 2012, pp 263-276

  • Summary

    This chapter determines why cooperatives failed in the period between 1950 and 2010 and analyzes these failures with a view to establishing whether there are rules to which they were subjected. It compares three corresponding cases: the decline of Western European consumer cooperatives between 1960 and 1985; the failure of Japanese credit cooperatives in the 1990s; and the restructuring of American agricultural cooperatives between 1990 and 2010. In the case of Western Europe, the findings suggest that the decline of consumer cooperatives followed closely the hypotheses that have been put forward by the demand school of thought. The cases suggest that there are some common elements. All of the failures were connected to changing economic conditions that may be described as transitions from situations of market failure to competitive environments, often as a consequence of technological and organizational change, but sometimes as a corollary of shrinking markets and deregulation.

Page 1 of 2