Multi-level Dynamic Framework for Co-operative Creation, Transition and Transformation

Economic institutions such as cooperatives serve as carriers of history maintaining norms and cultural patterns over time. Cooperative systems often exhibit an important inertia or path dependency on old forms or... [ view full abstract ]

Economic institutions such as cooperatives serve as carriers of history maintaining norms and cultural patterns over time. Cooperative systems often exhibit an important inertia or path dependency on old forms or organizational logic and can make certain necessary adaptations to changing market conditions difficult, resulting in the persistence of inferior governance structures and preventing subsequent adjustment. However organisational logics may also be a source of relationships, capacities and activities which can be reactivated or transformed creatively given existing diversity, i.e. not all entities/actors have progressed in the same manner and in the same way, and allow creative solutions in times of crises. Institutional paths contain possibilities and resources for change and off-path directions and organizational forms. In understanding how reactivation, changes in direction or the taking of new paths take place at micro, meso and macro levels, looking at how dynamic lifecycle frameworks have been structured is useful. In an attempt to give a rough picture of a general dynamic cooperative lifecycle, concepts from Helfat and Peteraf (2003), Cook (1995), Helfat, et al (2007) and Schneiberg (2007, 2011) and Ostrom (2005) are merged: i) founding /economic rational; ii) organizational design and the development of cooperative institutions; iii) growth and iv) maturity (from which choice follows) and three levels of analysis: micro, meso and macro. This research informed results from the Int.Re.Coop project and also the structuring of themes for ICA 2016 Almería. As well, it it related to a current project: Proyecto I+D de Excelencia-Retos Y Oportunidades en la Concentración e Integración de Empresas Agroalimentaria (P12-SEJ-2555) of the Andalucían Government (Challenges and Opportunities in the Concentration and Integration of Agroalimentary businesses).