Cooperatives and Social Capital: A Narrative Literature Review and Directions for Future Research

Isabel Saz-Gil,Ignacio Bretos,Millán Díaz-Foncea

doi:10.3390/su13020534

Abstract

How cooperatives generate and absorb social capital has attracted a great deal of attention due to the fact that they are collective organizations owned and democratically managed by their members, and, accordingly, are argued to be closely linked to the nature and dynamics of social capital. However, the extant literature and knowledge on the relationship between cooperatives and social capital remain unstructured and fragmented. This paper aims to provide a narrative literature review that integrates both sides of the relationship between cooperatives and social capital. On the one hand, one side involves how cooperatives create internal social capital and spread it in their immediate environment, and, on the other hand, it involves how the presence of social capital promotes the creation and development of cooperatives. In addition, our theoretical framework integrates the dark side of social capital, that is, how the lack of trust, reciprocal relationships, transparency, and other social capital components can lead to failure of the cooperative. On the basis of this review, we define a research agenda that synthesizes key trends and promising research avenues for further advancement of theoretical and empirical insights about the relationship between cooperatives and social capital, placing particular emphasis on rural and agricultural cooperatives.

Highlights

In recent decades, a wide range of literature has emerged concerning clarifying the concrete factors and mechanisms that determine the creation of social capital in enterprises [1,2,3], on the one hand, and with understanding how the existence of regional social capital can promote entrepreneurship [4,5,6,7], on the other hand
Cooperatives are part of the ideal, more sustainable model of rural entrepreneurship proposed by Korsgaard et al [14]
We started by running searches in Web of Science, Scopus, Science Direct, Ebsco, and Google Scholar for combinations of relevant keywords such as “social capital”, “social networks”, “trust”, “cooperatives”, “social entrepreneurship”, “agricultural cooperatives”, and “rural entrepreneurship.”

Summary

Introduction

A wide range of literature has emerged concerning clarifying the concrete factors and mechanisms that determine the creation of social capital in enterprises [1,2,3], on the one hand, and with understanding how the existence of regional social capital can promote entrepreneurship [4,5,6,7], on the other hand. There is consensus on the importance of considering organizational plurality, assuming that different types of organizations (public, private for-profit, and nonprofit organizations, social enterprises, and other hybrid organizations) have specific characteristics that are interrelated with the nature of social capital in different ways [8,9]. Within this framework, cooperatives have received considerable attention in the academic literature because they are considered social capital-based organizations [10,11]. The functioning of agricultural cooperatives as “user-owned, 4.0/)

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