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The purpose of this paper is to analyse the effects of member size and external incentives (food safety certification and target market) on cooperative’s product quality, using data collected from 135 apple producing cooperatives in China.

Given that different indicator variables were used to measure apple quality, the authors employed a principle component analysis method to reduce the measurement dimension. An ordinary least square regression was employed to analyse the effects of member size and selective incentives of agricultural cooperatives on product quality.

The empirical results show that member size and cooperative’s product quality bear an inverse “U-shape” relationship, and food safety certification and target market variables tend to positively and significantly influence cooperative’s product quality. In particular, the cooperatives with more food safety certificates and targeting supermarkets and export enterprises are more likely to supply high-quality products.

This study provides the first attempt to measure apple quality and investigate the factors that influence cooperative’s product quality.

The purpose of this paper is to identify how board size and board member compensation impact the operating performance of Farm Credit Associations. Cooperatives are a unique business structure that might not have profit maximization as a goal. Thus measures of performance other than return on equity are used to establish the link.

The paper uses regression to explain the relationship between board characteristics and performance.

The results of the models of return on assets and equity indicated that board size and compensation explain little of the variability in performance in these profitability measures. The results of the models of operating efficiencies explained a greater proportion of the variability in the operating efficiency and operating expenses‐to‐average assets ratios. In both models the relationship exhibited diminishing returns to board size and per member compensation.

The data are based on just one year of performance, limiting the generalizability of the results.

The paper includes implications for the size of boards of directors and director compensation.

This paper fulfils an identified need to study the impacts of boards of directors for cooperatives.

Focus group interviewing is a qualitative research technique that is widely used in private industry. In recent years, there has been a notable growth in the use of focus group sessions research to gain insight into the use of dynamic relationships of attitudes, opinions, motivations, concerns, and problems concerning current and projected human activity.

The objective of this research is to identify and characterize the coordination systems used by SME hub firms that are in a situation of dependence with respect to other members of their network, taking into account the influence of hub firm size.

Seven case studies were carried out: six innovation networks in which SMEs play a central role are compared with a “reference” case, in which the hub firm is a large company.

The authors' qualitative empirical analysis of seven innovation projects showed that: the sharing of benefits and the guarantees that are implemented vary depending on the hub firm's degree of dependence; trust and recourse to formal agreements differ according to hub firm size; and conflict solving is influenced by both hub firm size and degree of dependence.

Results have important implications for the management of innovation networks which are increasingly important for the development of SMEs. The knowledge of the adequate coordination mechanism is central for a SME hub firm and the success of the innovation project.

Investigations into the internal operation of inter‐organizational networks have become increasingly common. Nevertheless, empirical studies are still rare, particularly in the field of innovation networks and even more in the case of networks set up by small firms. This article partially fills this gap.

Health care insurance companies often conduct sample surveys of health plan members. Survey purposes include: consumer satisfaction with the plan and members’ health status, functional status, health literacy and/or health services utilization outside of the plan. Vendors or contractors typically conduct these surveys for insurers. Survey results may be used for plans’ accreditation, evaluation, quality improvement and/or marketing. This article describes typical sampling plans and data analysis strategies used in these surveys, showing how these methods may result in biased estimators of population parameters (e.g. percentage of plan members who are satisfied). Practical suggestions are given to improve these surveys: alternate sampling plans, increasing the response rate, component calculation for the survey response rate, weighted analyses, and adjustments for unit non-response. Since policy, regulation, accreditation, management and marketing decisions are based, in part, on results from these member surveys, these important and numerous surveys need to be of higher quality.

This study explores the awareness (AWN) levels of good governance amongst Thai credit union cooperatives' (CUCs) members and the factors hindering good governance practice in Thai CUCs.

This study used a survey questionnaire from 629 members of 36 selected CUCs in Thailand. This study analysed the determinants of governance AWN levels of Thai CUCs' members using the ordered probit model. The study also employs OLS estimation to investigate the factors hindering good governance practices.

The study shows that members of different CUC types and sizes have different levels of governance AWN. Members' characteristics, experiences, and perceptions significantly influence CUC members' AWN of governance issues. The findings also suggest that a lack of morality, transparency, participation, responsibility and accountability are key obstacles that hinder good governance practices of Thai CUCs.

This is the first study that attempts to assess the level of AWN amongst Thai CUCs' members in different CUC sizes and types. This is also the first research that identifies the factors that hinder good governance practice in Thai CUCs based on members' evaluations. The study's findings provide important reference and implications for Thai policy makers and CUCs' board of managers to enhance members' AWN and CUCs' governance performance, and thus increase income and living standard of CUCs' members in the long term.

Layout optimization of structures aims to find the optimal topology and member sizes in an integrated manner. For this purpose, the most successful attempts have addressed the outstanding features of the genetic algorithms.

This paper utilizes a direct index coding (DIC) in a way that the optimization algorithm can simultaneously integrate topology and size in a minimal length chromosome in order to seek the true optimum in an efficient and reasonable manner. Proper genetic operators are adopted for this special kind of encoding together with some modifications in the topological mutation aiming to improve the convergence of the algorithm.

The present DIC, has the following features: enforcing one‐to‐one correspondence between discrete genotype space and the problems' phenotype space; avoiding any out‐of‐bound parameter addressing and limiting the GA search only to necessary genotypes; reduction in the size of genotype search space to increase the algorithm convergence and the possibility of leading to the global optimum; dealing with direct genetic operators so that the GA parameters can be purely controlled to tune the desired balance between convergence and escaping from local optima.

Employing direct index chromosome makes it possible to eliminate the additional topological bits in treated examples.

This study aims to explore the set of corporate social responsibility (CSR) committee attributes that may enhance CSR performance and CSR strategy formation and reduce CSR controversies.[AQ1] Towards this end, the study also explores the differences between companies with and without CSR committees in terms of these three CSR performance facets.

The study uses a sample of financial times stock exchange (FTSE) 100 non-financial companies in 2015–2017. Kruskal-Wallis test is conducted to test the differences in CSR performance in firms with CSR board-level committee, CSR management committee and no committees. Additionally, a regression model is used to explore the attributes of CSR committees that lead to better/less CSR performance and CSR strategy/CSR controversies. A two-stage least squares regression model was used as a robustness check.

Firms with board CSR committee have better CSR performance and CSR strategy and lower CSR controversies than both firms with no CSR committees and firms with a CSR management committee. Regression results show that CSR committees that are predominantly consisting of independent board members, chaired by a female director and setting more meetings have better CSR performance. Additionally, CSR committees were found to have lower CSR controversies when having more independent directors and a chair with CSR expertise. CSR strategy was better with the CSR committee represented by a larger group of members.

This study makes several contributions to the sustainability governance literature and regulatory/guidance interfaces. There is extant literature examining audit committee attributes and their effects on various firm outcomes. The same can be said on the regulations of the audit committee. CSR committees’ composition and benefits are, by far, less regulated and largely under-researched. Hence, this paper is considered an early attempt to explore the CSR performance improvements a CSR committee may bring and the composition that would bring better CSR performance.

The purpose of this research is to provide information about derivative bibliographic relationships in the online catalogue COBIB, to investigate size and complexity of bibliographic families and to determine whether bibliographic characteristics are associated with the extent of derivations.

A bibliographic entity consisting of a work and item is represented by bibliographic records. A random sample of records is converted into a sample of progenitor works and bibliographic families for each progenitor are constructed.

25.75 per cent of progenitor works are derivative; successive derivations with 67.02 per cent appear most frequently. The size of bibliographic families ranges from 1 to 16; older progenitors have larger families. The majority of families have one type of relationship; there is one case with four types. A large proportion, 59.06 per cent, of derivative relationships is not expressed explicitly by catalogue.

Research of bibliographic records representing more than one work is needed. It is also important to find out what catalogue users are looking for: a work or an item?

A model for COBIB is suggested; it enables an equal identification of works, items and relationships. A cataloguer must create an authority record for each work and link it with corresponding bibliographic records for items.

Information about relationships should be incorporated into the catalogue and corresponding records linked. Explicit control of derivative relationships would be of great help to catalogue users and would make information retrieval improved and more precise; it would also allow more efficient use of knowledge and library materials.

How do ego-networks evolve? How does such evolution affect firms’ innovation output? This chapter uses a longitudinal sample of firms in the biotechnology industry to address these questions. We use social network theory to develop a model of the structure and dynamics of firms’ interorganizational research collaboration ego-networks. Using novel longitudinal methods, this chapter demonstrates how research collaboration ego-networks in the biotechnology industry change over time and how this evolution affects focal firms’ subsequent innovative output. The model is tested on a sample of 482 biotechnology firms over a span of 17 years (1990–2006). The results indicate the significant impacts of ego-network size, ego-network growth, and the inclusion of new members in the ego-network on the innovation output of biotechnology firms. Our results also suggest that enlarging ego-networks by adding new and diverse members presents significant management challenges.