Search results

The literature on labor-managed firms identifies the source of under-capitalization in the Furubotn–Pejovich effect. Appropriable capital accounts can counteract the horizon problem, but they engender little-examined problems connected with the distribution, reinvestment, and reimbursement of net surpluses. This paper proposes that the introduction of cooperative bonds would provide a better match between the horizons of members and their firms. However, bonds generate risks of their own due to capital variability, thus requiring the imposition of various constraints and the retention of appropriate levels of collective reserves. Finally, a hierarchy of liabilities is proposed to protect parties who undergo information disadvantages.

This study aims to examine the relationships between the rules that a cooperative membership decides upon and members' motives for action. It considers individual self-interest in relation with motives that are consistent with the values of cooperation.

This paper comprises two parts. The first is theoretical and discusses cooperative governance's features in the context of individual motives. The second part is empirical and based on survey data from Italian multistakeholder, worker-run social cooperatives. It uses cross-sectional data gathered from 4,134 workers and 310 managers in 310 cooperatives in Italy to provide evidence of rules and individual motives. Regression analysis confirms the existence of a linkage between individual self-interest and motives.

Rules mainly, but not exclusively, play an enabling function, which implies responding to both nonmonetary and monetary individual motives. With greater articulation within institutions – through the definition of multiple rights for accessing decision-making – the authors expect increases in individual capabilities to match motives with specific organizational rules in pursuit of consistent ends. This is confirmed by the association that the authors found between individual motives and commitment.

The authors’ illustration is limited to one specific type of cooperative, the social cooperative, in which prosocial motives are expected to be stronger than in other cooperative forms, although one could say that all cooperative models emphasize procommunity and prosocial aims. Data are cross-sectional and do not allow for the identification of causality, only of statistical relations' strength.

The continuous scrutiny and adaptation of motives and means imply that cooperators communicate and engage in a learning process.

While the institutional spheres that support investor-owned organizations and self-interested profit-maximizing behavior have been analyzed, a framework that accommodates personal control rights and a richer view of individual motives is lacking. The value added from the paper is to suggest one.

This study investigates how the creation of social value occurs in different organisational fields, and how it is implemented by organisations that are typically associated with member welfare and social objectives. The purpose of this study, specifically, is to analyse how social responsibility is implemented in organisational forms that do not pursue profit-making objectives in an exclusive or dominant way, that is, organisations that explicitly shape their aims and governance around the production of social value.

The paper discusses the main types of organisational forms and their relation with social responsibility. It then presents four case studies completed between 2011 and 2013 in Scotland, UK. These include a range of types of non-investor-owned organisations: two employee-owned companies, one co-operative enterprise and one social enterprise. The case studies have explanatory and descriptive nature, and were aimed at enquiring how non-conventional organisations design their governance, achieve economic sustainability and show capacity to produce social value.

Findings highlight the most common elements of the modality by which social responsibility is instituted in the non-profit sector. These include: modifying control rights (“who takes part” and “according to what criteria”); including stakeholders in decision-making processes eventually by means of external networking (how decisions are made and what resources are shared); and making societal aims explicit (“to what expected effects”). Results also emphasise that the production of social value presents challenges.

Results indicate that social responsibility can be created in different ways. This study’s analysis, however, is limited to illustrative cases from the specific context of Scotland. First, further research is needed on solutions that contribute to a practical understanding on how social value is produced in a variety of contexts. Second, this research does not address what competences are required to develop such solutions. Finally, in this study, the focus has been mostly on successful cases. More insights on the difficulties and limitations that non-investor-owned organisations face when implementing social responsibility would be needed.

The implementation of this study’s findings is within the control of practitioners and can be useful to the sector, as it identifies the features and challenges of governance consistent with deep forms of social responsibility.

The paper identifies forms of organisations that place the creation of social value at their core. In doing so, this study’s contribution improves understanding around forms of enterprise that can generate positive impacts for society, so that society can promote them actively.

This study’s contribution offers unique case studies using a framework that analyses social responsibility in a novel way that is by explaining how non-conventional firms design their governance consistently with the aim of producing value for society and to what extent this is done by including diverse interests coming from a variety of stakeholders.

In Italy, worker cooperatives (WCs), whose workers hold major control rights over collectively-owned assets, are the leading vehicle for the promotion and development of employee ownership. Worker cooperatives are present in all regions and in most economic sectors, employing about 506,000 workers and generating a turnover of about €22 bn. Despite their history and diffusion, the high prevalence of WCs in Italy is under-researched and -thematised and requires new research.

The paper leverages unpublished primary and secondary data from Centro Studi Legacoop databank, the Aida-Bureau Van Dijk databank and the Cooperative Registry of the Ministry of Economic Development (CRMED) to explain the spread of WCs in Italy.

This paper reveals descriptive statistics of WCs and investigates their distribution across economic sectors and regions, their economic and financial performance and gives an overview of the relevant legislation. The paper indicates that older small- and medium-sized cooperatives located in central and north-eastern Italy perform best economically. However, in recent years, an increasing number of young cooperatives has emerged in South Italy thanks to favourable legislation, cooperative finance and the diffusion of cooperative know-how. Limitations to such results are reported in the conclusions.

The paper sheds light on past and recent development trends of WCs in Italy, highlights their growth in South Italy and revitalises the debate on the drivers, structures and rationales of employee-owned enterprises in Italy. Findings generate implications for research and practice. Given the tendency of WCs to better protect jobs than investor-owned enterprises, the spread of these enterprises may help workers find better and more stable jobs, counter-cyclically mitigating the dangerous effects of macro- and meso-economic fluctuations and instability.

Many nonprofit missions and the goals of socially responsible corporations are often found to refer to similar moral ideals related to improving the quality of human life. To take account of this salient fact, the paper aims to theorize the functional equivalence between corporate social responsibility (CSR) and the nonprofit sector.

The argumentative strategy is to draw on the conceptual construct of the complexity-sustainability trade-off to develop a systems-theoretic interpretation of Roger Lohmann’s vision of the commons as an embodiment of collective voluntary action.

The emerging conceptual imagery is that of corporations and nonprofits as social systems continually seeking to sustain themselves by processing and codifying their societal environment which includes the commons in which Lohmann took a central interest. The possible functional equivalence of corporations and nonprofits is traced back to their struggling to develop and improve their responsiveness to the respective commons.

This argument is shown to cut across a range of issues in the modern nonprofit sector scholarship, while shedding new light on the ongoing debates on CSR and stakeholder theory.