Apart from cooperative lore: Why is it important to the German Cooperative Audit Associations (CAA) to work for the establishment of new cooperatives?? Why bother?
1. German Cooperative Law created originally the stable and self-preserving system of CAAs, which perform mandatory audits for their mandatory members. In principle, such a system is in stasis, which means it may fluctuate but will not change radically.
2. During the last decades, threats (real and as such perceived) arose that might endanger the CAAs organisational survival. It is posited that there are in fact two factors which threaten the stability of the CAA-system, namely too few cooperatives within the system and/or a changing legislation.
3. CAAs act to counter those threats.
This paper will discuss both the theoretically existing and the de facto used measures by the CAAs to counter such threats. Additionally, strategic and tactical, inter-organisational and intra-organisational practices are identified and put into an explanatory context of neo-institutionalism (DiMaggio & Powell 1991; Meyer & Rowan 1977) and resource-dependence theory (Pfeffer & Salancik 1978; Drees & Heugens 2013).
Between 1970 and 2000 the total amount of German cooperatives declined with more than 50 % - despite the reunification – from 18.620 to 9.100 (Harbrecht 2001). Very few new cooperatives were established during this period: from around 40 new cooperatives per year, the numbers of new cooperatives have risen recently to around 250 per year since 2009 and up until now (DGRV 2015).
Apart from very few exceptions, it is the Cooperative Audit Associations (CAA) which alone deliver active help and start-up counselling for new cooperatives in Germany. Interestingly, the CAAs long-term and short-term goals seemingly collide in this vital aspect. The organisational survival (long-term goal) of the CAA is partly dependent on a rising number of new cooperatives. But, usually, fees charged by the CAO for start-up counselling do not cover the real costs. To actively pursue new strategies or open new fields of possible cooperative activity and entrepreneurship is both a costly and risky business. To identify, establish and preserve contacts to other outside actors and institutions in the spirit of establishing new cooperatives in new fields and with the help of those other actors is uncertain and costly as well. To finally actually audit small and (to the auditor possibly) new cooperatives is also not cost-efficient. To sum up: the establishment and audit of new cooperatives is in fact counterproductive to short term organisational goals; new cooperatives usually cost money and do no generate any profits for the CAA.
Simultaneously, the CAAs live and breathe in a changing institutional landscape, in which mergers of CAAs mirrors those of the cooperative banking sector and lead to a scene with fewer but bigger organisations, competing with each other and doing so on various levels. In unison with such ongoing organisational change, the actual staff, meaning the start-up counsellors of the CAA form a relatively coherent community of practise (Wenger 1998) with formal and informal meetings where experiences are exchanged and common solutions and new ideas are shared and developed.
This paper is part of an ongoing Ph.D.-project on the current state of the support system towards the establishment of new co-operatives in Germany. The empirical material was gathered in case studies via total population sampling, i.e. all German CAAs were examined.
Key words:
German Cooperative Audit Associations, establishment of new cooperatives, support systems, organisational behaviour.
References:
DGRV (2015). Genossenschaftsgründung. (retrieved 13-02-2015), http://www.dgrv.de/de/genossenschaftswesen/neugruendung.html
DiMaggio, P. and Powell, W. (1991). "Introduction." Pp. 1–38 in The New Institutionalism in Organizational Analysis, edited by DiMaggio, P. and Powell, W. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Drees, J. M. and Heugens, P. (2013). "Synthesizing and Extending Resource Dependence Theory: A Meta-Analysis." Journal of Management, 39: 1666-1698.
Harbrecht, W. (2001). Die Genossenschaft als Rechtsform für junge Unternehmen. Eigenverl. d. FOG.
Meyer, J. and Rowan, B. (1977). "Institutionalized Organizations: Formal Structure as Myth and Ceremony." American Journal of Sociology, 83(2), 340.
Pfeffer, J. and Salancik G.R. (1978). The External Control of Organizations: A Resource Dependence Perspective. New York, NY, Harper and Row.
Wenger, E. (1998). Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning, and Identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
