This research explores accountability to beneficiaries within Civil Society Organisations (CSOs). Conceptualised as “downward”, this direction of accountability is of increasing research interest, given that beneficiaries are impacted by the mission of a CSO. However, the concept of downward accountability is used almost unanimously across CSO forms which cover a diverse array of organisational qualities, structures, missions, and people. This suggests downward accountability to be an encompassing concept, amenable to diversity among CSO forms; but is this the case? Is downward accountability the same across CSO forms and if not, how does the CSO form impact downward accountability? To respond to these questions, this research examines downward accountability across and within three CSO forms in Australia: public philanthropic foundation, service provider, and cooperative. Findings from 48 interviews suggest while there are clear differences in downward accountability relationships, mechanisms, and motivations across the three CSO forms examined, the impact of these different CSO forms upon the conception of downward accountability is minimal, where downward accountability displays similar characteristics across these forms. The insights gained contribute to problematising the concept of downward accountability, thereby providing a more sophisticated and nuanced understanding of a complex phenomenon.

Credit unions are voluntary cooperative financial institutions. At present there are 621 credit unions in Ireland serving two million members. Credit unions espouse the principle of gender inclusiveness, which is viewed as a fundamental cooperative concept. Based on a survey of 500 Irish credit unions, this study explores the role of women in credit unions. Judged against participation rates for women in the labor market and in specific organizations such as trade unions, the study suggests that gender balance in credit unions is superior to that elsewhere in Irish society. There is, however, some evidence of gender imbalance in the composition of credit union boards with this being most visible for key decision-making positions such as Chair and Vice-Chair. It also emerges that gender imbalance becomes more pronounced for larger credit unions supporting the contention that women are found in greater numbers on small and less well-connected not-for-profit boards.

In this paper, we analyse the emergence and development of social enterprise in South Korea. Our purpose is to show how different broad, consensual and successive conceptions of social enterprise—the so-called meta-models—have generated a dynamic and complex environment which includes a variety of models of social enterprise. Based on multiple data sources, including interviews, documents, statistics and field research, we illustrate the diversity of Korean social enterprise models by using the EMES ideal-type as a conceptual framework that leads us to analyse the social, economic and governance dimensions of each type of social enterprise. This research suggests that the social enterprise phenomenon should not be limited to its expressed contents or to an excessively strict legal or economic definition. It eventually contributes to advancing our understanding on social enterprise by showing that the definitions and concepts of social enterprise can be diverse across different social, economic and political contexts. For this reason, building a universal typology that can embrace social enterprises in different national contexts is by far a challenging task.

Housing is an area in which the active involvement of citizens in the provision of services has the potential to enrich individual lifestyles, local communities and the organisations providing housing, regardless of whether public, private for-profit or non-profit. Yet in current housing markets, housing tends to be purely individual, in the form of home ownership, or collectively managed through social rented housing. The article explores the conditions under which co-production in this field could be successful, as an alternative model. The analysis, which draws upon the work of Ostrom, is based on empirical fieldwork carried out among German housing cooperatives. As it turns out, successful co-production depends primarily on the long-term maintenance of group boundaries and specific trajectories of organisational development. This can make co-production an attractive model for specific social groups, but there are drawbacks: it also tends to lead to limited use of the invested capital and an inward orientation.

It has been shown that, in a context of economic crisis, cooperatives remain more resilient and flexible than other forms of entrepreneurship. The current study investigates the possible explanations for the varying dimension of cooperatives sector in different countries. To this end, focusing on the institutional environment, this work introduces a variable not commonly found in studies on entrepreneurial activity, political activism. We present an empirical analysis based on a structural equation model (SEM-PLS) applied to a database on 52 countries. The model leads us to draw the conclusion that there exists a direct and indirect relationship between political activism and the size of cooperative sector.

Our article sheds light on two enduring debates within the cooperative literature: the degeneration thesis and the spillover thesis. While the degeneration thesis suggests cooperatives are doomed to failure, the spillover thesis suggests otherwise, contending that the experience of democratic control furthers social change beyond the cooperative itself. By turning to critical theory, we are able to bring new insights into these conversations. The early Frankfurt School placed a primacy on the subjectivity of social actors, arguing that capitalism serves to impact the consciousness, rationality, and depth-psychology of subjects, acculturating them to market societies. By exploring this in conjunction with the literature on cooperatives, we are able to add weight to the degeneration thesis and to demand further concessions from advocates of the spillover thesis. Ultimately, the article stresses the lack of importance placed to date on subjectivity within cooperative studies and argues that this needs to be remedied.

In recent years, nonprofit scholars have increasingly studied the phenomenon of social enterprises which has become a generic term describing a wider reorientation among third sector organizations. The emergence of social enterprises has also led to a dynamic of hybridization and broadening in the cooperative sector, similar to an earlier dynamic of “economization”, but this time on the other end of the organizational spectrum. This paper aims at developing a fine-grained conceptual understanding of how this organizational dynamic is shaped in terms of member coordination, thus contributing to a more comprehensive theoretical understanding of different organizational forms of cooperatives. Specifically, to highlight the difference to traditional member-focused cooperatives, the paper introduces the term third-party-focused cooperatives for those social enterprises which emphasize economic goals as well as control and ownership by a particular community (typically place-based). The key result of the paper is that with the shift from member- to community-focus in cooperatives, the main coordination mechanism becomes one of norm-based trust on the basis of generalized reciprocity. In contrast to traditional maxim-based trust member coordination on the basis of relation-specific reciprocity, this enables third-party-focused cooperatives to mobilize bridging and linking social capital, facilitating collective action aimed towards the community interest. The findings suggest that this identity shift requires a mutual re-positioning between the cooperative and the nonprofit sector, in terms of umbrellas as well as regulatory and legislative bodies.

This article presents the main results of a longitudinal case study of a strategic change process in a cooperative bank. Pursuing both a “social” mission and an explicitly economic rationale, this particular nonprofit organization provides an exemplary research setting for inquiring into the delicate and contradictory interplay of mission focus and commercial imperatives. Departing from the practice perspective as a micro-view on everyday strategizing—an approach that seems to have not found its way into NPO-research yet—allows us to take an in-depth look at how people go about the process of making strategy despite the tensions between mission and profit. Our data yields three patterns of strategizing practices that aim at fostering economic growth without damaging the social mission, namely supporting diverse positions, protecting stabilized relationships, and relating to organizational experiences. Building upon our empirical results, we tentatively conceptualize “balancing practices” as potentially important acts of strategizing in NPOs.

The existing literature has claimed that the state-backed social enterprises in South Korea could be degenerated since the South Korean civil society is not advanced enough to safeguard them against the isomorphic pressure wielded simultaneously by the state and the market. Taking this claim seriously, this paper examines the recent development of social economy in South Korea. Based on the considerable changes in the long-standing statist model of non-profit sector since the late 1990s, the enormous impact of 2011 FAC on the civil society and social economy, and more frequent collaborative effort between the local governments and civil society organizations since 2012, this paper claims that the development of social economy in South Korea has recently shifted from dominance of state power to a mixture of top-down and bottom-up approaches.

In this paper, we analyse the interaction between immigrants’ employment in cooperatives and the business cycle. The study is centred on the Spanish economy during the period 2003–2015. The main goal of this paper is to answer the following two key questions: are fluctuations in immigrants’ employment in cooperatives cyclical in relation to the business cycle? And, are immigrant employees more vulnerable to the business cycle than native employees? The cycles and their turning points are identified using the Bry and Boschan (Cyclical analysis of time series: selected procedures and computer programmes, National Bureau of Economic Research, New York, 1971) algorithm. To resolve it we employ the BUSY software, developed by the European Commission. The procedure allows us to identify the features of the cycle phases and to calculate the synchronization index. The results show that (1) employment in cooperatives is procyclical and with no differences between immigrant and native workers, (2) the economic crisis has hit immigrant workers harder than native ones, (3) the immigrants’ birthplace is significant because some cyclical behaviour can be found to vary according to the immigrants’ origins; however, in general, sensitivity to the business cycle is the common factor.

This study explores the dynamics of cooperatives, with a focus on the internal challenges associated with sustaining democratic governance and promoting active member participation. The emphasis is on individual-level participation within the workplace, an often-neglected aspect in cooperative literature. An empirical model examines how member loyalty influences constructive and destructive voice behaviours. Leader–member exchange (LMX) relationship and integrative mechanisms are the proposed mediators in this context. Analysing data from 301 members of 19 worker cooperatives in Italy revealed different mediating effects through LMX, integrative mechanisms and a combined sequence. These findings enrich the cooperative literature by highlighting the importance of loyalty and voice behaviours in regenerating cooperative principles and member participation. The study also underscores the role of interpersonal relationships in affecting operational processes and explaining members’ loyalty and participation dynamics, proposing suggestions for cooperative management upholding democratic governance rooted in trust-based relationships, organic organisational models and mutual values.

Research on differences between public, for-profit, and nonprofit providers of welfare services has provided mixed findings, depending on welfare state arrangement, regulation, and service area. This paper’s objective is to study the differences between public, nonprofit (cooperatives and other nonprofits), and for-profit welfare providers from the perspective of the users in the tightly regulated Scandinavian context. We ask how the users perceive the providers from different sectors differently and how this variation can be explained. The study relies on a large-scale survey carried out in 2015 in the city of Oslo, Norway. From the survey, we identify the two main results. First, despite limited differences, users of nonprofit kindergartens are generally more satisfied than users of for-profit and public kindergartens. Second, an important explanation for variations in user satisfaction among kindergartens is identified in a pocket of regulatory leniency: the quality of food service. This is the only expense that varies among kindergartens in Norway. These results indicate that more lenient regulations could potentially increase provider distinctiveness. Based on the existing literature, we discuss why nonprofit providers seem to fare better in the minds of users than public and for-profit providers.

This article examines how the ideological outlook of the British worker co-operative movement gradually assumed a neoliberal character. Drawing on methods from conceptual history, it traces the evolution of the movement’s key ideas and explores the changing language in which they were expressed. Central to this shift was the emergence of a social-enterprise discourse that reframed an earlier New Left commitment to pursuing worker control “in and against the market” as a conviction that such control could be achieved only “in and through” market participation. The study centres on the Industrial Common Ownership Movement (ICOM), a national federation of worker co-operatives active in Britain between 1971 and 2001. It uses items published by ICOM, material from numerous archives, and oral interviews conducted with some of those involved in the federation’s final years.

The word taʿawuniyya (“cooperative”) in Palestine today can mean multiple things. It can mean a registered cooperative, or can loosely refer to any initiative based on collective labor and possession, geared toward a collective societal benefit—a communal garden, for example. This vernacular usage of the term, close to the concept of the commons, is borne out of Palestinian history and is an invitation to go beyond the formal definition of a cooperative when searching for a Palestinian “cooperative movement.” Registered cooperatives in Palestine have historically played a role that ranged from subordination and placation by ruling authorities to reformist and survival mechanisms for a colonized population. Informal cooperatives, on the other hand, played roles that surpassed survival and attempted to upend the basis of colonial control. Apart from structure and labor relations, what unites both senses of the term “cooperative” is the political role they have played, as well as their tendency to focus on basic necessities such as food and housing. The history of the cooperative movement in Palestine tells a story of social production and reproduction as an arena of struggle, particularly against Zionist colonization. This essay will give an overview of this history, focusing mainly on the areas of Palestine occupied in 1967.

The English weavers who organized what would become a flourishing cooperative business in 1844 remain famous worldwide. In the second half of the nineteenth century, their story traveled through a newly international labor press, inspiring workers to build cooperatives in the template set forth by the so-called “Rochdale Pioneers.” While scholars have detailed the Rochdale model’s impact on the cooperative movement itself, historians have missed its significance as a vector for wider changes in working-class politics. Drawing on cooperative movement literature and organizational records, this essay traces the transnational circulation of the Rochdale story from Britain to the United States from the mid-nineteenth to the early twentieth century. I explore how the Rochdale method’s influence simultaneously standardized cooperative practices, and reflected a protracted shift in anti-capitalist struggles. Against the backdrop of land dispossession and anti-labor violence, the Rochdale experiment captured hopes for a cooperative economic strategy fit to survive in the modern era. Focusing on the rise of consumers’ cooperation in the United States, I show how organizers mobilized a cooperative vision for a post-enclosure world—one consistent with the structure, if not the spirit, of private property and commodity markets. This article explores how the cooperative movement became a vital site for reimagining economic autonomy as industrial capitalism conscripted ever more people into wage labor.

This article looks at the final years of French colonial rule in Dahomey through the lens of development policies concerning the territory’s main resource: the oil palm tree. It examines how the Dahomean leaders dealt with the issue of development once the Loi Cadre allowed them to have a say in the matter. I argue that the Dahomeans were crucial in finding new development strategies even before formal independence. It also tries to assess the extent to which these solutions followed or departed from previous colonial attempts. The article therefore first describes the main features of colonial oil palm development in Dahomey since the end of the Second World War. Second, it depicts how Dahomean leaders rethought the development approach and why they found in the “syndicate association” the institutional tool to implement it. Finally, it argues that this solution, which combined features of Soviet and Israeli cooperatives with approaches specific to African socialism, was different from any other option previously considered by the colonial administration. By analysing late colonialism from a non-French perspective, this article argues that the Africans were no less crucial actors than the Europeans in the making of the late colonial state.

Evolutionary scientists argue that prosociality has been central to human ecological success. Theoretical models and behavioural experiments have found that prosociality, and cooperation in particular, is conditional and context dependent, that individuals vary in their propensity to cooperate, and that reciprocity stabilizes these behaviours within groups. Experimental findings have had limited validation with observations of behaviour in natural settings, especially in organizational contexts. Here, we report in situ measurements of collective action, which show that reciprocity is abundant in organizations embedded in a cash economy. We study small ‘food clubs’, where members share bulk purchases and are considered to be heavily dependent on cooperation. We use high-resolution data on the economic interactions of 1,528 individuals across 35 clubs and over a combined 107 years of operation. We develop a network method to detect different directional and temporal forms of economic reciprocity, and statistically classify individual behavioural types akin to those in experiments. We find abundant direct reciprocity, supplemented by indirect reciprocity, and that members of most clubs can be identified as consistent reciprocators. This study provides initial observational evidence that economic reciprocity may be more abundant in real-world settings, sharpening the findings of the behavioural study of cooperation and contributing to the more naturalistic study of reciprocity and prosociality.

Over the recent years, Polish historiography has experienced a noteworthy “people’s turn.” Regrettably, these works tend to reinforce stereotypes that portray the peasantry as a politically inert “mass.” The objective of this paper is to challenge this portrayal of the Polish peasantry as a largely passive majority lacking effective means of contestation. To accomplish this, I delve into an analysis of peasant self-organization during the turn of the early twentieth century in Galicia and the Kingdom of Poland. My investigation is based on a micro-historical approach, drawing upon autobiographies authored by activists engaged in rural cooperatives written in the initial decades after World War II. The cited autobiographies provide plenty of specific evidence regarding plebeian collective agency. By juxtaposing the political perspectives of modern institutions with the vernacular categories of actors within specific historical circumstances, I aim to ground theoretical conclusions in an asynchronous and subversive vision of modernity.