A systematic literature review of cooperatives

Cooperatives play an important role in social and economic development. Since the nineteenth century, coops are producing, marketing goods, and providing services to their stakeholders: not only to their members, but also to... [ view full abstract ]

Cooperatives play an important role in social and economic development. Since the nineteenth century, coops are producing, marketing goods, and providing services to their stakeholders: not only to their members, but also to their customers and communities.
Nonetheless, coops are somewhat a neglected research domain in the Business and Management field, and consequently received quite limited research attention. We believe that is due for three reasons. First, coops do not fit into regular entrepreneurship theories, because they suffer of frown upon democratic governance structures. Second, since limited attention is given to the coops as organizational form and management education; usually managers and entrepreneurs are unaware of the benefits that coops can bring. Third, coops are mostly present in sectors that are considered less dynamic and innovative, therefore attract less attention. For example, coops shows a great success in the agricultural sector, although the agricultural sector is usually not perceived as being very innovative.
Nowadays, the research interest for related organizational forms, such as hybrid organizations is overwhelming. Because coops face similar challenges, they address this threats responding to the society needs, and market failures; also at the same time they are solving problems for customers, members, and society. Coops can provide meaningful insights into the literature on hybrid organizations. In many aspects can be seen as the ideal hybrid organization, blending economic with social and cultural value creation.
In this paper we aim to review and synthesize the available literature to improve our understanding about coops. We query with the keywords “cooperative,” “co-operative,” and “coop.” Since these keywords, we selected papers base on relevant tittles, and then by reading the full paper., and finally we got a set of relevant papers. The final results are collated in a table that contains an overview of definitions; the various topics studied, research context, research methods, and key findings of each study. These findings are then compared to the social entrepreneurship literature, allowing us to distill similarities and differences between both fields, and how these fields can learn from each other.
Our study has three main contributions. First, it provides an overview of research findings in a particular organizational form that has been around for a long period of time. Second, we derive valuable lessons from the literature in relation to coop success. And final, the (social) entrepreneurship field can learn substantially from the coops field and vice versa.