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Cooperatives are formed with the idea of cooperation. Due to their features, cooperatives have the potential to address the issue of poverty alleviation and improvement in income distribution, which currently is the central focus of governments' economic policy making. Currently, Islamic cooperatives or shari'ah-based cooperatives have also been developing well. Shari'ah-based cooperative is essentially the transformation of conventional cooperative through an approach in line with the Shari'ah principles. It could be one of the best solutions in supporting Islamic banking and finance for unbankable customers. This chapter describes the development of cooperatives in Malaysia and Indonesia. The chapter also discusses the need for cooperative governance and highlights the features of cooperatives that results to their governance is more complex that the governance of business organisations. This chapter also highlights laws, regulation and shari'ah governance measures taken by both jurisdictions to promote growth of shari'ah-based cooperatives.

Developing appropriate conflict management strategies (CMSs) is important for a firm to achieve better relationships with its supply chain partners. However, the literature has rarely considered how firms may simultaneously adopt various CMSs to address interfirm conflicts. Accordingly, this study aims to identify manufacturers' CMS archetypes with their main suppliers based on interfirm interdependence structure, further examining the relationship between various CMS archetypes and exchange performance.

First, the authors theoretically propose a manufacturer's CMS archetypes configured with Rahim's five CMSs based on interfirm interdependence structure. Second, cluster analysis with data from 200 Chinese manufacturers is used to generate a manufacturer's actual CMS archetypes. Third, the authors analyze the relationship between interfirm interdependence structure and Rahim's five CMSs as well as that with the new configured CMS archetypes. Finally, the authors use Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) to compare exchange performance disparities among manufacturers using different CMS archetypes.

First, cluster analysis results show that three archetypes – cooperative, competitive and cooperative-competitive CMS – emerge during interfirm conflict management. Second, regression analysis shows how interfirm interdependence structure can affect manufacturers' choice of different CMSs and CMS archetypes. Third, ANOVA results indicate that when addressing interfirm conflicts, the strong cooperative, strong competitive and strong cooperative-competitive CMS archetypes can help manufacturers get good relationship satisfaction with main suppliers. Regarding supplier opportunism, while both strong cooperative and strong competitive CMS archetypes are effective at restraining opportunism, the cooperative-competitive CMS archetype may trigger higher levels of supplier opportunism.

This study enriches the interfirm relationship management literature and provides insights for manufacturers to better address interfirm conflicts.

Farm income in the agricultural sector is susceptible to natural and market risks. A large body of literature has studied the effects of cooperative membership on household welfare, technical efficiency, productivity and production behavior, yet little has been known about the impact of cooperative membership on farm income volatility. This paper aims to fill this research gap by investigating the relationship between cooperative membership and farm income volatility of Chinese pig farmers and drawing policy implications.

This paper examines the effect of cooperative membership on farm income volatility, using data from a two-round survey of pig farmers in China. The authors employ an endogenous switching regression model to address the selection bias issues associated with unobserved factors simultaneously affecting farmers' participation in agricultural cooperatives and income earning activities.

Using household panel from a two-round survey of 193 pig farmers in China, this analysis highlights two key findings: (1) agricultural cooperative membership has significant and positive effect on farm income stability and (2) the impact of cooperative membership on farm income stability varies with production scale.

This research makes two contributions to the literature. First, this study contributes to the scant literature exploring the relationship between agricultural cooperatives and farm income stability. Second, to the best of the authors' knowledge, this is the first study that explores such relationship in a livestock sector. The pig sector in China and around the developing world has been increasingly challenged by multifaceted risks (e.g. price fluctuations, epidemic diseases, environmental regulations), and understanding the role of agricultural cooperatives in farm income stability of pig farmers is of great practical and policy significance.

This paper is a case study of a cooperative whose involvement in the retail business was exemplary of a successful cooperative, bold enough to venture into the retail business. Known as the Johor Cooperative Supermarket (JCS), it was established in 1976 with the support of a firm number of cooperative members, totaling 15,000 at its peak. The purpose of this paper is to examine the success story of JCS and the eventual demise of such an outstanding cooperative.

Using the case study method through in‐depth interviews with the board of directors of the cooperative, information was accumulated to conceptualize the story and trace the chronological events relevant to the case.

Unlike other business entities, JCS was established on the foundation of a cooperative that seeks to attain profitable standing for the benefit of its members. Located strategically in the southern tip of Johor Bahru in Malaysia's southern state of Johor, the supermarket attracted a large number of Singaporeans who find the assortment of merchandise and the pricing of the vast array of goods offered by JCS an attractive lure to shop in this cosy and neighbourly supermarket. However, a strategic decision on its location eventually led to the closure of this once supreme supermarket.

The paper traced the history of the supermarket and trailed the strategies which the management took that led to its ultimate demise. This case is also a reflection of the brave move undertaken by the members of the cooperative board to venture into a big retail business that makes it susceptible to the peculiarities and erratic movement of the business environment.

Cooperative advertising is intended for the mutual benefit of channel partners. Shows that manufacturers and dealers/distributors in the boating industry view this marketing activity very differently. Manufacturers see no connection between cooperative advertising and other aspects of the relationships with their dealers. On the other hand, dealers relate their views of cooperative advertising to other facets of their relationships with manufacturers. Consequently, when there is conflict over cooperative advertising, it is liable to have a negative effect on other arrangements that dealers have with manufacturers. Manufacturers may not understand how negativity creeps into other relationships between dealers and themselves.

It is generally recognized that consumer cooperatives are at a disadvantage when raising capital as compared to conventional capitalist firms. The purpose of this paper is to explore a method for consumer cooperatives to issue transferable membership shares as financial securities and raise non-redeemable equity. The author examines if such a method can strengthen the financial viability of consumer cooperatives in the market economy.

The author first explain the mechanism by using diagrams of the circular flow of factors of production and the product. The author then developed a simple formal model and compare the amount of equity capital raised by a capitalist firm and a consumer cooperative.

The author found that the amount of equity that a consumer cooperative can raise by issuing shares of membership is greater than the amount of equity that a capitalist firm can raise by issuing shares of stock.

More research effort is required to apply the theory discussed in this paper for practical use.

Consumer cooperatives have many good features that conventional capitalist firms do not have. However, the scale and scope of consumer cooperatives have been quite limited partly because of the problem of finance. The method presented in this paper is expected to improve the financial viability of consumer cooperatives and promotes their activities in the market economy.

This paper regards the membership of a consumer cooperative as a kind of financial security and as a tool for procuring capital for investment. As far as the author knows, the present paper is the first one that presents such a concept.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the recent financial trends affecting grain and farm supply cooperatives.

Review of and descriptive analysis of current cooperative finance topics.

In recent years three important trends have become apparent among grain marketing and farm supply cooperatives. These farmer-owned firms have been rapidly investing in infrastructure, reformulating profit distribution and equity strategies, and have pursued consolidation with other cooperatives.

Grain and farm supply cooperatives are changing at a rapid clip to meet the needs of their evolving and growing farmer-owners. New research is needed to help these cooperatives meet these needs, and this paper identifies new areas of research in cooperative finance.

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.

France is the third country in Europe after Italy and Spain for the number of employee-owned firms, with some 2,600 worker cooperatives (SCOPs). The authors propose a comprehensive review of SCOPs and any barriers to their expansion.

The authors analyse relevant legislation; review the rich empirical economic literature on SCOPs; and offer new descriptive empirical evidence comparing SCOPs and other French firms.

SCOPs benefit from a consistent legal framework and a well-structured and supportive cooperative movement. Cooperative laws allow attracting external capital, provide barriers against degeneration and encourage profit allocations that favour investment and labour. SCOPs are distributed across a wide range of industries; are larger than conventional firms, as capital intensive, more productive and survive better. Despite this good performance their number remains modest, perhaps because of information barriers.

An examination of the Italian and Spanish experiences and the relationship between SCOPs and the French labour movement might contribute to explaining the modest number of SCOPs.

The first comprehensive review of French worker cooperatives in four decades and the first with extensive comparative data on SCOPs and conventional French firms. With some of the best data on worker cooperatives in the world, findings have international relevance.

Transformational leadership (TFL) has been identified by a number of studies as a positive force for business success. However, few studies have explicitly examined its influence on the cooperative employment relationship, such as frontline employees' voice in the workplace. Thus, this study conducts an empirical analysis of dual-level (i.e. group-focused and individual-focused) TFL and its effect on frontline employees' cooperative voice.

This empirical study is based on data from a survey of 468 full-time frontline workers from 38 hotels in China.

The empirical results revealed that both individual-level and group-level TFL are significantly associated with frontline employees' cooperative voice. Person–Organization value congruence and Person–Supervisor value congruence both act as mediators in the linkage between group-level TFL and employees' cooperative voice behaviors. The partial mediating role of Demand–Ability congruence on the relationship between individual-level TFL and cooperative voice is also established.

First, this study investigates the dual-level effects of TFL on the cooperative voice behavior of frontline employees. Second, this study explores whether three dimensions of value congruence mediate the influence of TFL on the voice behaviors of employees.