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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.

For many, co‐operatives represent a challenge to existing systems of industrial relations and organisation structure. However, many of the co‐operatives which have been formed in recent years do not approximate to this vision, since they have not been set up from an ideological standpoint. Co‐operatives can be divided into three types: small business; participative; ideological. It is also important to evaluate their development against the reasons for their evolution. Indeed, the new co‐operatives are ideologically diverse, organisationally different, and a considerable way off being the job generators of the future.

In this article it is intended to describe aspects of internal working relationships in small co‐operative businesses which distinguish such firms from conventional companies. Subsequently we go on to assess the effect of such relationships on the work of an outside consultant brought in to advise the co‐operative. The article is based on the work that the authors did with four small co‐operatives in the London Borough of Lambeth during the first half of 1980.

This policy brief calls for co-operative industry associations to implement policies that encourage co-operatives to embrace the SDGs in a way that reflects the co-operative difference. In particular, this brief explores why it is important for co-operatives to measure and report on the SDGs and to link the SDGs to the seven principles of co-operatives. We argue that reporting on the SDGs in the context of the seven principles enables co-operatives to illustrate their co-operative difference from investor-owned businesses (IOB) who are increasingly reporting on SDG performance. We identify key recommendations that are critical in facilitating co-operatives’ adoption of the SDGs and in reporting their performance relative to the SDGs and the seven principles.

How the Chinese Nationalist Government tried to use co‐operatives as a socio‐economic instrument in mainland China (1928‐1949) but met with little success is discussed. The historical background of the Chinese co‐operative movement is presented, the structure and quality of different types of co‐operatives examined, the performance of co‐operatives and the benefits of being a co‐operator evaluated and the characteristics and problems of this system considered.

The purpose of this paper is to consider the historical basis of development of corporate social responsibility and the impact of this on co‐operative enterprises and member‐owned businesses.

This is a viewpoint identified by years of experience dealing with co‐operative organisations.

The paper finds that the basis of development of corporate social responsibility from the perspective of commercial corporations does not promote an adequate accounting framework for co‐operative enterprises and member‐owned businesses.

Practitioners in different areas of business are trying to make sense of sustainability accounting and reporting in a commercial setting. This piece by one of these, draws on a topical initiative around co‐operative enterprises to raise questions around what is meant by performance in the context of member‐owned enterprises and whether the field of corporate social responsibility has overlooked the relevance of ownership in terms of organisational incentives for action.

The author proposes a series of definitions for co‐operative performance, which are designed to underpin metrics that relate to “member value”. This is offered in contrast to “shareholder value” for companies that, unlike co‐operatives, are owned by external shareholders.

The field of corporate social responsibility is a major user and innovator of the tools and techniques for sustainability accounting and reporting. But it tends to be silent on ownership. However, if different models of ownership create different incentives for action on sustainable development, then rather than just accounting for “how” an enterprise operates, however it is owned and led, there may be value in tools to test “whether” an institution is fit for purpose in its fundamental design.

The paper develops a new perspective and future research opportunities in identifying performance measures for co‐operative enterprises.

The second half of the 1970s witnessed a resurgence of interest in industrial co‐operatives and all the evidence suggests that this interest will gain further momentum in the 1980s. An understandable but regrettable tendency to concentrate publicity on a number of celebrated rescue cases should not be allowed to obscure the fact that some 200 new industrial co‐operative ventures have been established over the last decade.

This chapter contributes to the discourse on the impact of employee participation in organisations. Using worker co-operatives as special cases of participatory firms, we discuss the role of values in organisations and their importance in a business context. We devise and apply the CoopIndex diagnostic tool as a method of assessment of the ‘health’ of an organisation whose members aspire to align co-operative management with the application of the co-operative principles and values.

The purpose of our article is to contribute to the further understanding of individual responses to pluralism, by studying in particular the role played by critiques and compromises in the formulation of such responses. Drawing on theoretical insights from the sociology of conventions, we look at the various modes of justification publicly advanced by French co-operators when engaging with co-operative principles. Our analysis allows us to identify three main instantiations, that is situated and flexible enactments, of these principles: pragmatic, reformist, and political. Our contribution to the understanding of pluralism and its instantiations by organizational members is threefold. First, in contrast with studies drawing on an institutional-logics perspective, our study shows that individual instantiations of pluralism rely not only on positive affirmations of logics but also on critical mobilizations of competing logics. Second, our study shows that pluralism can be understood not only as co-existing multiple logics, but also as different possible instantiations of the same logic, the ambiguity of which allows compromises to be settled with other logics. Third, we suggest that organizational members’ responses to pluralism often involve more than two logics, which are combined into a complex set of interdependent judgments. In addition, in relation to co-operative studies, our proposed typology provides a mapping that usefully extends the range of possibilities found in co-operators’ instantiations of co-operative principles, thus furthering our understanding of the diversity of the co-operative movement.

In the last two decades, a new form of organization has progressively become predominant on many global markets: networks. Very few worker co-operatives have adopted such a pattern though, despite the fact that, as the theoretical literature shows, the advantages of network industrial structures are numerous and networking can be considered a necessity in the context of globalization. After introducing a new framework for analyzing networks, we argue that combining several dimensions of integration has been an important factor of efficiency in three case studies: Mondragon Corporacion Cooperativa, the industrial districts of Emilia-Romagna, and Scop Entreprises.