Sammanfattning

This study examined the extent to which farmer cooperatives enjoy social capital within their memberships as they become internationalised. The empirical basis was a survey of farmers in Finland. Findings from limited dependent variable regression models suggest that the farmers who are most loyal to their cooperatives tend to oppose its foreign investments. Another group of farmers tended to switch membership status between different cooperatives, and a third group tended to opt out of cooperatives. The two latter categories were characterised by a lower level of social capital, and both of them welcomed the cooperatives' international operations. This finding was more significant for individual farm types than the social capital-linked opposition to internationalisation. A general conclusion is that the internationalisation of cooperatives seems to affect the members' trust in the cooperative differently. Thus there is increasing heterogeneity within the memberships which may give rise to governance problems.

Nyckelord

Agricultural cooperative; internationalisation; social capital; Multi-Nominal Logit model; Finland

Publicerad i

Agricultural and Food Science
2014, Volym: 23, nummer: 4, sidor: 291-306
Utgivare: SCIENTIFIC AGRICULTURAL SOC FINLAND

SLU författare

• Nilsson, Jerker

  • Institutionen för ekonomi, Sveriges lantbruksuniversitet
    

• Hess, Sebastian

  • Institutionen för ekonomi, Sveriges lantbruksuniversitet
    

UKÄ forskningsämne

Företagsekonomi


Publikationens identifierare

DOI: https://doi.org/10.23986/afsci.45222

Permanent länk till denna sida (URI)

https://res.slu.se/id/publ/64250