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The paper aims to identify “problematic” agricultural credit co‐operatives (CCAM) and to evaluate their risk of insolvency as a function of financial indicators, providing regulators and other stakeholders with a set of tools that would be predictive of future insolvency and perhaps bankruptcy.

Using a database of CCAM failures in the period between 1995 and 2009, statistical models of failure of CCAM, are estimated and compared, using logistic regression analysis and multiple discriminant analysis for assessing the potential failure of CCAM as a function of financial/economical indicators.

The paper identified the variables customer resources growth, transformation ratio, credit overdue, expenses ratio, structural costs, liquidity, indebtedness and financial margin as determinants of CCAM failure. It suggests that CCAM take measures geared to boosting business, to shoring up the financial margin and the deposit base, to bolstering the complementary margin and to improving the credit recovery processes. Additionally it is necessary to increase cost efficiency, rationalizing structures and procedures consistent with reducing operating costs without detriment to the quality of service provided.

This paper helps to understand why agricultural credit co‐operatives fail.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the issues and concerns of Indian rural credit, which is a powerful tool for enhancing production and productivity and for poverty alleviation. Further it highlights some of the strategies adopted by Reserve Bank of India (RBI) to increase the rural credit facilities in the rural area of India.

The various tools of rural credit are analysed in detail. The Regional Rural Bank (RRB) who play a vital role in increasing the rural credits is studied. Self Help Group (SHG)‐Bank Linkage model of NABARD which creates an interface of the informal arrangements of the poor with the banking system is also analysed in detail.

Rural credits serve as a tool for providing a sustainable livelihood for millions of rural Indians who don't have a means of livelihood. Several organisations like RRBs, Microfinance Institutions, NABARD, etc. are playing a major role in providing rural credit facilities to rural India. Reserve Bank of India (RBI) is formulating and regulating the policies and procedure to make the rural credit facilities available to most of the needy. In spite of several efforts put up by various organisations to increase the rural credit facilities, several challenges will prevail in the years to come.

These aspects of the financial sector remain undervalued in mainstream literature on rural credit. With India being a nation in which more than 70 percent of people live in rural areas and rural credit being a powerful, and the only, tool for rural people in providing a means of livelihood, its importance and potential should be known to each individual.

After reading and analysing the case study, the students would be able to understand the various challenges in terms of credit expansion for a rural co-operative bank, discuss the role of an apex co-operative bank within the three-tier credit structure, understand the co-operative banks’ product offerings in the agribusiness space and understand the various styles of leadership and change management models within a rural bank.

This case study exemplified the enabling role played by a co-operative credit institution, Andhra Pradesh State Co-Operative Bank (APCOB). It discussed the issues and challenges APCOB faced in mainstreaming an unconventional lending process through its lower tiers. Although the three-tier credit structure played a significant role in the disbursal of short-term loan to farmers, the managing director strongly felt the need to reach out to farmer institutions like farmer producers organization through suitable product offering and right processes.

This case study could serve as an introduction to rural credit co-operatives in MBA courses such as bank management, agricultural finance and rural credit and organizational behaviour. The case study could also be administered as a part of training programmes for state co-operative banks, district central co-operative banks and urban co-operative bank that are involved in planning and execution of development strategies in the area of co-operative banking and agribusiness development.

Teaching notes are available for educators only

CSS: 1: Accounting and Finance.

The purpose of this paper is to study the progress of rural development through the performance of a rural co‐operative.

Random sample of 100 members of the co‐operative have been selected. The opinion of sample members has been collected personally through questionnaire and also direct interview. Secondary data were collected from the published annual reports of the co‐operative. The data, both primary and secondary have been tabulated in a suitable sheet prepared for the purpose. Analyzing and interpreting the collected data, conclusion has been drawn.

The study reveals that the rural co‐operative has been able to improve the living standard of the rural people of the studied area, thus the rural co‐operative accelerated the process of rural development in remote India.

The study, is totally based on the sample opinion and published data of the co‐operative. The period of study is very short. So, the outcome of the study may not be generalized.

A smooth and active system of loan‐issuance and loan‐recovery of a rural co‐operative may uplift the living standard of the rural populace.

This research could assist in the management of a co‐operative since management‐efficiency regarding the recovery of loan has been proved in this paper.

The financial crisis of 2008 resulted in calls for change. Commentators suggested that co-operatives, in particular credit unions, could provide accountability and sustainability through their open governance and mutual status. However, such suggestions assumed that co-operative principles and practice continued to underpin the efficacy of co-operative banking, and that credit unions, one of the most prevalent forms of co-operative banking, could offer a viable financial alternative. Instead, in the case of Cyprus, the financial crisis and the associated aftershocks triggered the nationalisation and demutualisation of credit unions. This prompted the researchers to question both the viability of a co-operative banking future and the extent to which co-operative principles were shaping decision making, governance, accountability and sustainability. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

A case study approach was adopted to explore the degree to which co-operative principles still shaped credit union thinking and stakeholder relationships.

As is the case elsewhere within the co-operative movement, the findings point the fact that governance is weaken by the low membership participation and that the principles are no longer universally applied. Credit unions, if not co-operative banking, may not offer the financial assurances that commentators have called for. Moreover, the guiding principles may no longer be embedded within the fabric of the movement.

Findings are important for practitioners/supervisory body as they highlight possible impacts on co-operative’ future and especially on their governance model and level of autonomy and independence in case of state intervention.

The research undertaken is original as it is the first time credit unions in Cyprus were examined for adherence to co-operative principles.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the factors that affect the Canadian credit unions' financial performance which play an important role in providing financial services to the agriculture sector.

We surveyed the literature to identify different performance metrics of credit unions and a set of possible factors that might affect their performance. We collected data related to different dependent and independent variables from financial statements and balance sheets of 189 credit unions and from general websites like Statistics Canada and Bank of Canada. Then, we imputed the missing data and developed fixed effect and random effect panel data regression models. First, we used return on asset as the main dependent variable. Afterwards, we used six performance metrics to check the robustness of our models.

From an initial list of 16 possible factors that might affect the financial performance of a credit union, we were able to narrow the factors down to the nine most significant ones. It was observed that credit unions in the prairies were more likely to perform well financially as compared to other provinces. Membership size, the size of a credit union in terms of total assets, capital adequacy ratio, market penetration, diversification of income, inflation rate and provincial GDP and interest rates were significant. The cross-sectional analysis performed confirmed the findings of the fixed effect panel data models.

This study has a limitation concerning the number of years included into the time series analysis. Only ten years worth of data were available.

Results provide credit union management, service providers for credit unions and market analysts with a current understanding of how different internal and external factors might affect return on assets, return on equity, delinquency, cash ratio, efficiency ratio, asset growth and loan growth. Our models can be used to predict financial performance of credit unions based on the defined significant variables.

Although there is a wide body of literature that studies performance of banks, not many studies focus on credit unions. Moreover, the existing studies are based on credit unions in United States or Europe, and literature on Canadian credit unions is scarce. The data collected covered 189 Canadian credit unions. To our knowledge this is the first study that looks at the various internal, external and regulatory factors together that affect the credit unions in various jurisdictions of Canada.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship of non-financial and financial factors to firm survival, provide evidence of factors related to financial success and distress for prominent Australian agricultural firms, and improve the predictive capacity of financial failure models.

The paper utilizes mixed method exploratory case studies across four Australian agricultural firms (two successful and two failed) listed on the Australian Securities Exchange.

The authors found that the use of an Integrated Multi-Measured approach provided a higher classification rate for the failed group than those provided by an individual measure. We also discovered that non-financial factors associated with the agricultural organizations studied impacted their success or failure. These factors included managements’ involvement in organizational strategy and the composition of the board of directors. It was also apparent that management decision-making approaches may become frozen, or at best restricted, in the face of impending failure, dependent upon the stress level within the organization and the management skill base.

The cases studied indicated that non-financial factors of failure occurred prior to any financial predictors, intuitively indicating a relationship between non-financial and financial factors in Australian agricultural firms.

The identification of financial and non-financial factors and sound internal processes which distinguish successful and failing firms can be utilized for the development of an early warning predictor of organizational success or failure.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the financial structure of Italian cooperatives in the period before and during the crisis (2004-2013), in relation to two discriminating factors. At this end, it focuses on two research questions: What financial dynamics the Italian cooperatives have involved before, during and after the 2008 crisis, that is, in the decade 2004/2013? Are there statistically differences between business sectors and geographic area?

Secondary data on AIDA database have been used. The financial structure is assessed using two ratios: the financial leverage ratio and quick ratio. The final sample consists of 1,446 cooperatives. The trend and exploratory analysis, analysis of variance and Tukey-Kramer post-hoc test have been used.

The financial structure of cooperatives has not been substantially affected by the crisis in any geographic area and business sector, by virtue of resilience of their business model. Moreover, these two factors produce statistically significant differences in the financial structure of cooperatives.

The study takes into account only the cooperatives that survived the crisis, so, presumably, the strongest. Moreover, another and more ratios should be considered at the end to have a more complete view on the financial dynamics.

The literature on resilience of cooperatives is still not very rich. Moreover, this work analyses and integrates aspects and approaches that are not usually considered together.

In this study, the performance assessment of credit unions is developed, seeking to demonstrate how the content of their operations strategy is present in the structuring of unique models of organisational performance assessment. The main objective is to compare sources of knowledge through the content analysis of the service operations strategy as proposed by the literature and validated by specialists.

This research is a qualitative study that uses the knowledge of specialists to frame a performance assessment structure applied to credit unions. The research strategy is based on multicriteria analysis, and the selected techniques are based on the MCDA-C procedure, that is, the processes of structuring, evaluating and recommending improvements.

The research results provided: a data set external to the context that serves as theoretical support for the comparisons made; the structuring of 4 unique organisational performance assessment models carried out through the MCDA-C procedure; conceptual interpretation using the lens of the operations strategy in the cognitive maps of the assessment models, which identifies the operations strategy carried out; and comparison of the result models that show their uniqueness.

The comparison between the origins of knowledge is highlighted, and the demonstration of the content was proposed by the literature and by specialists to evaluate the performance in operations. This was then compared with the content constructed with credit union managers in structuring models based on the singularities of the respective contexts. The theory was compared to practice, and it was demonstrated how the content of the operations regarding the performance could be used in decision contexts.

Banks spend thousands of dollars on several CSR activities and communicating the same to defined stakeholders becomes a strategic task that must be artfully managed by the banks. Bank web sites now represent a useful communication platform in the reportage of CSR activities. This paper aims to report on CSR reportage amongst four leading banks in Ghana. Two of them have won CSR industry awards while the others have not.

A case study approach was adopted using Hinson et al.'s online CSR framework to analyze CSR reportage in the four banks. Two of them (one indigenous and the other, local) had previously won CSR awards at a Ghana Banking Awards ceremony in the last five years, and two had not. The data drawn from the banks were analyzed within and across the four cases.

Agricultural development bank, the bank with the most socially responsible bank of the year awards, has the weakest online CSR reportage in the study with just one CSR report online.

CSR communication is a rapidly evolving field of scholarship and this study adds to the extant literature from a developing economy banking perspective.