Cooperative Governance Structures Research Articles

Rebel Governance Structures and Violence in Apartheid South Africa

ABSTRACT What role do rebel governance structures play in deterring rebel-on-rebel violence? I argue that variation in rebel governance is an important factor. In 1990s South Africa, the African National Congress (ANC) and its armed wing, the MK, employed different governance strategies over pro-ANC militias. In the Sharpeville township, the MK imposed a hierarchical governance structure, which contributed to inter-factional ANC violence. In the Thokoza township, the ANC formed a cooperative governance structure between the ANC and the militias. As a result, Thokoza experienced less internecine conflict. Evidence for my argument comes from archival research and interviews with former pro-ANC militants.

Building an agreement in a farming cooperative governance: A Sociology of conventions approach

This study examines how a board of directors and management team establish an agreement under an agricultural cooperative governance structure. We carried out a case study of an agricultural cooperative based in France, the board members and management team of which were interviewed and observed for over four years regarding their ability to create and maintain an agreement in the governance of the cooperative. Building on the theory of conventions, our findings indicate that board members' and managers' hybridity constitutes the basis for establishing a compromise and developing a trusting relationship between board members and managers. Furthermore, we highlighted the chairperson's crucial role in building, negotiating, and permanently repairing cohesion between these two bodies. Our study contributes to a more holistic understanding of the relationship between the board and management by explaining how previous experiences in different “worlds” (e.g., farming, cooperative, commercial) create hybrid individuals and how this facilitates agreement between actors with different dominant logics.

We Are: Giving citizens control over their data.

Summary: The We Are platform gives citizens control of their own health data and actively involves them in decisions about the platform that manages the data, thereby guaranteeing them that they can manage and share their data in a safe way as a leverage for personal wellbeing and the common good. 
 Challenge: Data about citizens, consumers and patients is collected by the government in order to make policies, by companies to develop new products and for marketing and sales, or by hospitals, universities and knowledge institutions for research and innovation. Smart use of data is leading to new insights, valuable innovative processes and even better medicines and health care. Big data will allow us to have a better understanding of who is at risk from specific diseases and who benefits from particular treatments. 
 This can only happen if the data does not continue to be gathered and stored in separate silos. Bringing together data from a wide variety of sources creates inconceivable opportunities for research and development, but it will also require the data to be handled with extreme care.
 Engaging citizens and technology to do something about it: To this end, a Flemish consortium is building a platform providing a personal digital data safe, based for each Flemish citizen. The SOLID technology, a new way of managing data on the web, provides citizens with their own data safe in which they can store their personal data. Citizens manage this safe themselves. They only must enter their data once and can then immediately reuse it for the applications they prefer. 
 All safes are maintained together by a legal entity like a cooperative society. The cooperative governance structure is socially engaged and, on behalf of citizens, ensures utilisation of personal data for innovations aimed at a sustainable health system. 
 What are the next steps, what is the impact: Hence, the combination of personal health data types of all citizens, ranging from lifestyle to wellbeing, curated by themselves, is an unprecedented resource for sustainable innovation & growth, provided the access is arranged, by design, in an ethical way and compliant with legislation. It provides a way to enrich personal health data in a natural way and to collect citizen generated data which is currently often lost or scattered. 
 The realisation of this system innovation requires various activities in which all possible stakeholders (government, companies, research community, civil society and citizens, cf. the quadruple helix) have an important role to play. Doing so, we believe citizen-centered data management will contribute to the empowerment of the patient as a pilot in integrated care

A study on the determinants of successful performance of Indonesian cooperatives

PurposeThe purpose of this study is to look at the factors that influence the success of Indonesian cooperatives.Design/methodology/approachThis study employs a two-stage quantitative approach. Exploratory factor analysis (EFA) is used to determine the factors in the first step. The next step is to conduct a multivariate regression analysis to determine the impact of these factors on the cooperative success variable in Indonesia.FindingsThe components produced include Member Participation, Membership, Cooperative Governance Structure, Board of co-ops, Vertical Integration, Collective Action and Transaction Cost, according to the EFA results. A further study utilizing multiple regression techniques reveals that four elements, namely Member Participation, Board of Coops, Vertical Integration and Collective Action, have a major impact on the performance of Indonesian cooperatives.Research limitations/implicationsGeneralizations are impossible because of the small sample size and restricted responders. More studies are required, using a broader range of respondents and approaches.Practical implicationsThe results of the study contributed both to the stakeholders of cooperatives and to the development of cooperative science specifically in the context of Indonesian cooperatives. Cooperative stakeholders in Indonesia must realize that members are owners and customers of their cooperative. This awareness must continue to be echoed by cooperatives to its members in various ways, so that commitment arises to members to be willing to participate and cooperate. Awareness of members to participate and cooperate ultimately affects the sustainability of cooperative businesses and impacts improving members' welfare beds.Originality/valueThe study's novelty lies in a more comprehensive model of Indonesian cooperative success.Peer reviewThe peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/IJSE-02-2022-0078.

Institutional Forums

Chapter 3 of the Constitution of South Africa makes provision for cooperative system of governance between the three tiers of government: national, provincial and local. In higher education this provision finds expression through the Higher Education Act 101 of 1997 and institutional statutes. Cooperative governance of public universities pivots around key institutional actors as part of democratisation of institutional governance. Cooperative governance is an important twentieth-century governance innovation for South African public universities. In juxtaposing university governance and public accountability, democratisation has been identified as a crucial ingredient in broadening the processes of decision making, promoting greater participation and ensuring inclusion of black “bodies” in university governance. One of the cooperative governance structures of South African public universities is the institutional forum (IF). Born in the crucible of student activism in the 1980s, IFs have had a mixture of success and failures since their first implementation in 1998. They were conceived as agents for social justice and democratisation in the driving of transformation of public universities. This paper examines extant literature on the evolution, functions and challenges of the IF in driving institutional transformation and concludes by suggesting further areas for research.

Кооперативна култура и кооперативна гавърнанс структура на земеделските кооперации

In my study, I seek to shed light on the relationship between cooperative culture and cooperative governance structure in the agricultural cooperative. Its dual nature defines it as a specific business organization, combining both enterprise (business orientation) and a group/ community of members/ cooperative actors (social/ community/ group). As such, it has a specific cooperative governance structure, over which the cooperative culture has a key influence and is a significant factor for its effective functioning. This, in turn, is a prerequisite for the sustainable development of the cooperative. As the agricultural cooperative is a type of cooperative, the considerations and conclusions for the general type are valid for the specific one as well.

When Does Financial Performance of a Social Enterprise Translate to Social Performance?

There has been a growing interest in social enterprise as an alternative to for-profit and non-profit organizations. By combining the characteristics of non-profits and for-profits, this hybrid organization aims to tackle societal problems while generating revenues to do so. Although scholars are increasingly noticing the complementary relationship between financial performance and social performance of social enterprises, the literature has been silent on what causes the inter-firm heterogeneity in this relationship. In this study, I focus on the governance structure of social enterprises and try to answer the following question: Which will be a more effective form of governance structure – between corporations and cooperatives – for social enterprises to translate financial profits into social impacts? I suggest two competing arguments and empirically test their validity. On the one hand, cooperative social enterprises can better convert their financial performance into social performance than corporations because cooperatives pay more attention to social goals than economic goals. On the other hand, cooperatives’ democratic decision-making structures might delay decisions and thus hamper the efficient translation of financial profits to social impacts. Using the data on Korean social enterprises, I found that cooperative social enterprises have a lower tendency to reinvest financial profits for social purposes than corporation social enterprises. Mediated moderation analyses reveal that the negative moderating effect of cooperative governance structure is mediated by (i) managerial attention to social areas relative to economic areas and (ii) democratic decision-making structure of cooperatives. The implications for the social enterprise literature, comparative governance literature, and practice are discussed.

Category, Characteristics and Influence Mechanism of Farmers’ Cooperatives in China——Based on the Analysis of 8 Typical Case

Since the beginning of this century, farmers' cooperatives have been developing rapidly in China. Based on the principles of classic cooperatives, this paper investigates the farmers' cooperatives in practice in China. It is found that the cooperatives in practice do not conform to the principles of classic cooperation, and have strong characteristics based on realistic conditions. In practice, from the perspective of industrial chain, China's farmer cooperatives can be divided into four categories: engaged in production, engaged in "production + sales", engaged in "production + processing + sales" and providing services, and there are significant differences in the operation mode and governance structure of all kinds of cooperatives. For the reasons behind it, the author investigates the concentration degree of different types of cooperatives in the operation of various agricultural products, and found that different category of products have different demands on the functions of cooperatives, which makes the operation mode and governance structure of cooperatives formed for different functional needs present diversified characteristics. In addition, the author also points out that although there are essential differences between the farmers' cooperatives in practice and those in the classical, they can still play their unique functions, that is to say, they can influence the identity and income of farmers by changing the utilization of production elements in the traditional agricultural management mode.

Transformation Planning of Ecotourism Systems to Invigorate Responsible Tourism

The purpose of this study is to introduce transformation plans that can stimulate responsible ecotourism by using systems thinking to solve ecotourism problems in Korea. Systems thinking is a research method used to understand the operating mechanisms of the variables that influence an entire system, in order to identify its problems. The four types of ecotourism systems are classified as follows: low-infrastructure and resident-initiated, high-infrastructure and resident-initiated, high-infrastructure and government-initiated and low-infrastructure and government-initiated. These systems vary based on the need for tourism facilities and the form of governance. Each type of system is analyzed using the systems thinking process (dynamic thinking, causal thinking, feedback thinking, strategic thinking) at representative ecotourism sites in Jeollanam-do and the following transformation plans are proposed to improve the responsibility at the tourism sites: First, local residents will develop a system to manage and operate ecotourism ventures and establish cooperative governance structures to strengthen the local capacity. Second, ecotourism operators will improve the quality of their educational and interpretative programs and tourist information platforms in order to raise awareness of the responsibilities of ecotourists. Third, ecotourism systems that are improved through ecotourists’ and tour operators' heightened senses of responsibility can sustain ecotourism independently. These transformation plans can be applied to policy proposals for revitalizing ecotourism, to guidelines for improving community resilience and to biological habitat protection plans. This study is meaningful in that it discusses the role of stakeholders in ecotourism planning and promoting responsible tourism and their role in utilizing and conserving natural resources accordingly.

Supply Chain Management: Horizontal carrier coordination through cooperative governance structures

This paper examines how governance structures found in the trucking industry impact the coordination between a forwarder and its carriers, including three cases: no forwarder coordination (direct contracting with shippers), investor-owned coordination (price-only contract), and carrier-cooperative coordination (revenue-sharing contract). The carriers are engaged in a Cournot competition, where they decide upon service provision and truck investment. Economic theory predicts that integration of firms under oligopolistic competition always leads to a more efficient supply chain in the sense that prices decrease and quantities increase, which reduces total profits. This suggests that the benefit of avoiding double marginalization does not outweigh the benefit of upstream competition in the successive oligopoly case, whereas both integrated and independent firms coexist, the integrated chains do perform better. In this paper we examine the interaction between governance structures, a key decision when managing supply chains, including that found in the trucking industry, and shippers willingness to procure trucking services instead of producing them using a private fleet. We find that cooperative governance can contribute to improved service provision, reduced service price, improved consumer surplus, and improved profit for the carriers in equilibrium. We use parameter values based on the Swedish trucking industry and a larger grocery retailer acting as shipper to numerically illustrate the impact of different governance structures.

Situation features and governance structure of farmer cooperatives in China: Does initial situation matter?

The paper explores the effects of situation features on the governance structure types (GSTs) of farmer cooperatives in China. The “Situation–Structure” analytical framework is used to understand the relationship between situation features and governance structures in the field of industry economics. Four categories of GSTs of cooperatives are identified, i.e., common farmer-led, rural elite-led, enterprise-led, and related organization-led. The sample comprises 266 farmer cooperatives collected via a field survey in three provinces in China. A logit probability model is applied to address the effects of various situation features on GSTs. The results reveal that both technical and institutional environments have significant effects on the governance structure of cooperatives.

Innovation in low-energy residential renovation: UK and France

In both France and the UK, low-energy renovation of housing is an important part of wider climate change mitigation strategy. Policy directed at householders and building professionals aims to increase the number and ambition of low-energy renovations. However, persistent problems exist for delivering genuine energy reductions at scale, including the design–performance gap, which can be understood as a problem for industry related to three factors: knowledge and skills; uncertainty over who has responsibility; and poor communication. This paper reports two case studies, focusing on the practices of innovative construction firms – one in the UK and one in France. The UK case concerns a social housing organisation that developed innovative ways of working and delivered high-quality results at lower than expected costs. The French case study profiles a new start-up company with a co-operative governance structure offering guaranteed performance contracts to clients for its renovation services. Key common themes for these innovative firms are: new configurations of traditional roles and responsibilities on site; new ways of responding to the needs and behaviours of building occupants; and the integration of different feedback mechanisms to provide learning.

Cooperative Governance: What Impact on the Marketing of Saffron? Case of Saffron’s Cooperatives in the Area of Taliouine in Morocco

Cooperatives are major players in the rural areas as they generate income for members and contribute to sustainable socio-economic development of their territory. Good governance is now recognized as a major factor in organizational effectiveness. The peculiarities of cooperative organizations induce a specific mode of governance to reconcile cooperative principles and the economic logic of the market especially in the international context. This paper aims to present the results of a research whose objective is to show the impact of the governance structure of cooperatives on the marketing of the saffron product of Taliouine region (also known as the country of saffron: a local product with high added value) in Morocco. Our research focuses on the analysis of the nature and components of the structure of governance in saffron cooperatives and the evaluation of their implications on their marketing practices of saffron. This research is conducted by means of semi-structured interviews with presidents and members of the cooperatives of this area. DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2013.v4n10p681

Characteristics of small residential and commercial water systems that influence their likelihood of being on drinking water advisories in rural British Columbia, Canada: a cross-sectional study using administrative data

Health officials often lack information about characteristics that predict which water systems are most likely to be placed on and to persist on drinking water advisories (e.g. health warnings offering advice or information). This study uses data collected by the Interior Health Authority in British Columbia to characterize water systems on advisory for microbiological threats and to identify the variables associated with advisory status and length. By systematically extracting key characteristics, this study explores advisory status by examining associated variables: water systems size, administrative area, governance structure, water source, treatment level, and service type (e.g. residential or commercial systems). Results show residential and commercial water systems have different characteristics associated with advisory status and length. For residential systems, certain governance structures are more likely to be placed on and to stay on advisory, especially the cooperative governance structures not operated by local governments. For commercial systems, administrative area and system size were associated with advisory status, but not advisory length. The overall results highlight the influence of governance structure and support the need for targeted interventions to improve residential small water systems not operated by local governments or utilities. Lastly, these results show how health officials can use administrative data for program planning and evaluation.

Management Insights

Management Insights

Subsidiarity and Environmental Federalism: The Emergence of 'New Governance' in Finfish Aquaculture in Canada

This paper examines a dispute over the allocation of legislative competence in finfish aquaculture (Morton v. B.C.), with a view to elaborating on the application of the principle of subsidiarity to environmental federalism in Canada. The paper begins with a description of the legitimacy concerns in finfish aquaculture that have given rise to a highly polarized debate over the future of finfish aquaculture in Canada and have resulted in legal challenges, such as the Morton case, that seek to challenge the current cooperative governance structure in finfish aquaculture. The governmental response to this legitimacy crisis has been to turn away from traditional command and control forms of regulation towards more process-oriented, adaptive and collaborative forms of governance, which require less, not more centralization. It is argued that the trial court decision in Morton fails to appreciate the “New Governance” turn in finfish aquaculture. As a result, instead of viewing aquaculture regulation as a coherent, multi-level governance framework, the court treats the provincial scheme in isolation from the broader ecological, social and economic conditions that informed its creation. The position put forward in this paper is that in order for courts to make sound decisions on the allocation of legislative powers, they must incorporate a more theoretically complete understanding of the governance context of their decision. Indeed, the current principles of environmental federalism, which emphasize concurrency and subsidiarity, require courts to engage in a more searching examination of the nature of the regulatory framework subject to the constitutional challenge. Subsidiarity, while accepted as a relevant constitutional consideration, has not been elaborated upon by Canadian courts, but if we are to take subsidiarity seriously then it requires judicial engagement with the democratic and legitimacy-enhancing aspirations that inhere in that principle. In the context of environmental federalism, subsidiarity favours concurrent jurisdiction over exclusivity and counsels judicial deference towards inter-governmental cooperation.

Accounting Window Dressing and Template Regulation: A Case Study of the Australian Credit Union Industry

This article documents the response of cooperative institutions that were required to adhere to new capital adequacy regulations traditionally geared for profit-maximising organisations. Using data from the Australian credit union industry, we demonstrate that the cooperative philosophy and internal corporate governance structure of cooperatives will lead management to increase capital adequacy ratios through the application of accounting window dressing techniques. This is opposite to the intended purpose of template regulation aimed at efficiently increasing operating margins and lowering risk. Our results raise several debatable issues regarding the ethics of accounting management and the imposition of one-shoe-fits-all external regulation.

Key drivers in environmental legislation towards good governance

The trialogue model is investigated with reference to the process that should be generated by Government, Science and Society and the results that should be achieved in the interaction at the interfaces between the stakeholders. What should and what has been achieved are analysed and contrasted. The procedural part of the process is mainly the process of integrated environmental management, supported by a public participation process. The principles against which developments should be measured include sustainable development, the maximisation of benefits and evaluating land development by considering its merits. The structure that brings Society to the trialogue and a co-operative governance structure that brings Government to the trialogue are valuable key drivers that prepare the foundation for good environmental governance. The conclusion reached is that the process that has been developed recently is good. The legal principles that underpin the procedures are both key drivers for the process and valuable touchstones against which the environmental governance products of the trialogue can be legally verified. The conclusion reached is that, through the absence of integration, the process is not used to its best advantage. The valuable contribution that the new Process can make, and the risk of environmental degradation if it is not used, are such that there is great merit in trying to achieve its implementation The weaknesses are analysed and recommendations are made that aim to facilitate the integration of the use of available environmental governance process.

The governance of exchanges: members' cooperatives versus outside ownership

The paper compares co-operative governance structure to outside ownership. The distinction between the two lies in who has residual rights of control. It is found that a co-operative becomes relatively less efficient as the environment becomes more competitive, and the interests of members become more skewed. These ideas are applied to the governance of exchanges.

Fisheries self-governance: corporate or cooperative structures?

The concept of self-governance of fisheries resources has implicitly assumed that self-governance would be democratic in structure. This concept of self-governance is a patterned on the democratic governance of cooperatives. The present analysis argues for a corporate concept of fisheries self-governance. A corporate governance structure provides a vehicle for effective joint decision-making by producers, but avoids the inefficient longrun incentives created by a cooperative governance structure.