Abstract

This study finds that selective incentives induce district council members and chairpersons to work for the collective best of a co-operative membership. Being the lowest echelon of a co-operative's internal governance hierarchy, district councils constitute a link between the membership and the board of directors. Previous research indicates that district council members are often driven by a co-operative conviction and social concerns. The present study challenges this view. On the basis of a survey of all 191 district council members and council chairpersons of a large Swedish agricultural co-operative, it is found that the elected representatives rank low in terms of co-operative conviction and social concerns. They involve themselves mainly in order to get personal benefits; they want to gain access to information, mature personally and obtain inputs to develop their farm enterprises. The financial compensation is of limited importance.

Keywords

Agriculture; co-operative; internal governance

Published in

Annals of Public and Cooperative Economics
2018, Volume: 89, number: 4, pages: 581-598

SLU Authors

• Morfi, Chrysoula

  • Department of Economics, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
    

• Nilsson, Jerker

  • Department of Economics, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
    

Sustainable Development Goals

SDG8 Decent work and economic growth
SDG16 Peace, justice and strong institutions


UKÄ Subject classification

Business Administration


Publication Identifiers

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/apce.12206

Permanent link to this page (URI)

https://res.slu.se/id/publ/98930