Entrepreneurial ecosystem for cooperatives: The case of Kyrgyz agricultural cooperatives

The article discusses the development of agricultural cooperatives in Kyrgyzstan from an entrepreneurial ecosystem (EE) perspective. Agricultural development priorities explain cooperatives’ importance in Kyrgyz government's policies, but cooperatives still fail at countering the challenges of the smallholder economy. Considering agricultural cooperatives as a form of rural entrepreneurship, this paper aims to contribute to the discussion of the factors that support cooperatives in developing countries adapting the EE framework to cooperative entrepreneurship. Using a content analysis method, we analysed and coded textual data from documentary and archival publications on the agricultural cooperatives in Kyrgyzstan published by the government, cooperatives and their unions and the reports of international organizations. We identify five main dimensions of the cooperative entrepreneurial ecosystem for cooperatives: (1) policy and regulatory framework; (2) education and skills; (3) market environment; (4) culture; (5) networks. We found that even if the overall structure of cooperatives’ EE can be comparable to conventional enterprises, its sub-elements significantly differ for cooperative enterprises. Despite its exploratory character and single-case research design, this article contributes to the theoretical discussion on cooperative entrepreneurial ecosystems in post-socialist developing contexts and offers a framework of analysis for cooperative development policies and practices.     

Impact of cooperative membership on market performance of Nepali goat farmers

In developing countries, agricultural cooperatives are increasingly used by farmers as a mechanism to gain market power in input and output markets. To assess the impact of cooperative membership on market channel selection and pricing outcomes, we conducted a survey of 661 Nepali goat farmers in 2019–20 and applied an endogenous switching probit model to analyze the data. Our findings indicate that cooperative membership had a significant and positive influence on farmers choosing cooperatives as their market channel. Additionally, farmers who sold their goats through cooperatives received significantly higher prices than those who sold through local markets or to goat collectors. We also observed that farmers who had access to price information were able to obtain better prices for their goats. Overall, our study highlights the potential benefits of promoting cooperative membership and marketing through cooperatives, as these efforts can help farmers improve the returns on their agricultural investments.     

“Keep a sinking boat afloat”: Class contradictions in a nascent shrimp farmers' cooperative in South China

Whether producer cooperatives could serve as a stepping stone leading to socialism is a much debated issue in Marxian scholarship. It has now been recognized that producer cooperatives might possess paradoxical potentials of promoting egalitarian economy and democratic management whilst at the same time constructing class hierarchies. So far, agrarian scholars have already identified how pre-existing social differentiation facilitated privileged members to exploit the marginal non-members. However, they have not explored how members exercise their agency in challenging the class division. In summer 2013, at the height of China's cooperatization movement, I embarked on a project of “engaged anthropology” to mobilize shrimp farmers in South China to establish a cooperative so as to challenge agribusinesses that squeeze farmers' returns, but members ended up hiring outside labour. However, members tried hard to bridge the hierarchy between investors and workers as well as between managers and labourers in order to expand its membership and build the village's reputation. This paper traces how cooperative members deal with the dilemmas between profit maximization and egalitarian distribution, highlighting the importance of class analysis for a pro-poor cooperative movement.     

Employment protection regimes and dismissal of members in worker cooperatives

In connection with the "Great Reset" literature in management and organizational theory, this article discusses human resource sustainability, employment stability, and layoffs in worker cooperatives, a unique organizational form in which employees are members holding residual control rights. Theoretical and empirical contributions show that worker control stabilizes employment better than investor ownership, opening the door to stronger employment protection. The paper leverages key theoretical insights from evolutionary economics and systems theory to discuss the benefits and critical elements associated with limiting member layoffs in worker cooperatives. While strong employment protection can lead to short-term inefficiencies and underperformance due to labour hoarding, imperfections in governance and control mechanisms, it can foster better accumulation and retention of firm-specific human capital and dynamic capabilities, thereby supporting long-term performance.     

The resurrection of earlier imprints post mortem: Explaining the Turkish agricultural cooperative movement with an imprinting theory lens, 1888–1937

This study aims to extend the cooperative lifecycle theory, which builds on consecutive degeneration and regeneration of ideal cooperative values such as democracy, self-help, and solidarity by offering a new regenerative mechanism. In this respect, the study imports multilevel imprinting theory from the organizational ecology domain to explicate the punctuated evolutionary pattern of Turkish agricultural credit cooperatives, which displayed significantly different characteristics from Raiffeisen cooperatives that cooperative discourse in Türkiye used for a long as a benchmark. The archival research undertaken in the study asserts that the imprints of Ottoman Memleket Sandiks (OMS) have stamped agricultural credit cooperatives of the Republican era long after their erosion. The resurrection of imprints was enabled by Ziraat Bank, which acted as an intermediary organization and took over the remnants of OMSs. Our analyses also suggest that the State's polity and policy transformations culminate in selective activation of past imprints within the Ziraat Bank, which, in turn, shaped the Turkish agricultural cooperative field.     

Classifying the degree of cooperative multinationality: Case study of a French multinational cooperative

In recent decades, the largest European worker cooperatives, and those that are the most emblematic in their countries, have been transformed into multinational companies. This article examines workers’-cooperative multinationality by providing a classifying tool based on the interaction between control rights and return rights held by foreign employees in the subsidiaries of multinational cooperatives. We illustrate our matrix of cooperative multinationality by classifying an internationalized historical cooperative, Up Group (formerly Chèque Déjeuner, SCOP). In the last few decades, the French cooperative Up has become a hybrid multinational player in the employee benefits industry by setting up capitalist subsidiaries both in France and overseas. The case study also reports on Up's innovative attempt to produce a global cooperative or a more democratic multinational enterprise through converting subsidiaries’ employees into associates.     

农民合作社减贫的农户收入效应及其异质性——基于内生转换回归模型的实证分析

[目的]农民合作社具有“天然的”益贫特征，在精准扶贫时期发挥了重要作用，研究合作社减贫的农户收入效应及其异质性对于完善和优化合作社产业减贫政策，健全贫困治理长效机制，助力乡村振兴具有重要的现实意义。[方法]文章基于2018年云南、贵州、陕西和甘肃4省欠发达地区1 551份农户的调研数据，利用内生转换回归模型（ESRM），通过构建“反事实”分析框架，实证分析了合作社对农户所产生的收入效应及其异质性特征。[结果]（1）与未入社的农户相比，入社为其家庭总收入带来了约32.26%的收入增幅。合作社对非贫困农户、高收入分位数农户、中青年农户的减贫增收作用最明显。（2）除了对贫困农户财政性收入影响不显著外，合作社对不同贫困属性农户其他不同来源的收入均有提高，对贫困农户的农业经营性收入影响最明显，对非贫困农户的财产性收入影响最明显。（3）土地面积、生产性资产值、人情往来支出、户主受教育年限、是否参加专业培训、建档立卡户、是否有合作社、主要地理环境均显著正向影响农户入社决策；学生数量显著负向影响农户入社决策。[结论]在积极培育和发展合作社，鼓励合作社由“重数量轻质量、重服务轻规范”向高质量发展转型的同...     

Skin-in-the-game in ABS transactions: A critical review of policy options

Relying on a hand-collected data set of European asset securitizations, we analyze risk retention, a key regulatory reform requirement after the global financial crisis. We find today’s ABS markets to be characterized by significant retention opacity, caused by differences in legal retention options and retained portions. To improve the transparency of effective, rather than nominal, risk retention in the market, we propose a new, simple metric that captures the share of expected loss retained by the issuer. As to policy conclusions, we suggest to change the existing regulation by dropping the mandatory minimum retention and replacing it with a requirement for full transparency about effective risk retention.     

China's Rural Industrialization and Agricultural Mechanization

Rural industrialization provides nonfarm employment opportunities and financial support for farmers and may be a non-negligible cause of agricultural mechanization in China. However, there is a lack of empirical studies on this topic due to challenges in obtaining data and identifying causal relationships. In this paper, we use multiple data sources and construct an instrumental variable based on the number of handicraft production cooperatives in 1957 to test empirically the causal effect of rural industrialization on agricultural mechanization. The results show that rural industrialization contributes significantly and robustly to agricultural mechanization. A 10 percent increase in the average number of industrial enterprises per township was associated with a 1.05 percent increase in the agricultural machinery power per unit area of arable land. Both the demand effect and income effect played crucial roles in the interaction between these two phenomena.