The economic crisis which we are currently suffering has highlighted the greater stability of financial services cooperatives (FSC) in juxtaposition to the fragility of the rest of the banking sector. This has resulted in a resurgence of the cooperative form not only due to the positive effects...

The paper argues that the limited company can be looked upon as a transitional corporate form in-between the capitalistic mode of production and a new mode of production, as a springboard for the creation of a – fully socialist – system of cooperative firms. An additional aim of this paper...

In this paper, we examine major trends and potential for cooperatives in the context of four prominent socio-economic issues: the lack of jobs, economic and social inequality, educational mobility, and the priority need for innovations. We present recent data on the amount and types of job...

The aim of this paper is to describe the aid and support provided for social economy in Poland, especially with respect to social cooperatives. In Poland idea of social economy spread after 1989. One example of social economy entity in Poland is new type of cooperative – social cooperative....

After years of preconceptions about co-operatives in developing countries, scholars and international institutions have re-evaluated their role particularly in poverty reduction strategies. Crucial condition is that co-operatives are considered as genuine, authentically participatory...

A frequent characteristic of worker cooperatives is the tendency to reinvest a large share of profits into asset locks: a common fund, indivisible and not appropriable by members, neither upon quitting, nor at the end of the firms life. To explain this behaviour, I introduce the hypothesis that...

We investigate how cooperative firms reacted to the current crisis. This allows us to compare the behavior of cooperative and conventional firms facing exogenous shifts in demand. After a short survey of a stream of theoretical literature, we analyze a large group of Italian production...

When the threat of entry by followers includes cooperative firms, the maximum fixed cost that a profit maximizing leader can endure is endogenous. The aggressive strategy required for entry-deterrence curtails the leader’s expected profit and can discourage its initial entry. In such...

The lack of public understanding regarding the role and impact of cooperatives upon welfare implies not recognizing cooperatives as a form of entrepreneurial activity. There is an obvious need to overcome the contradiction between reality and recognizing cooperatives. The European Community,...

Cooperatives have proven to be a business model that has endured over time, even during the economic crisis. Even if they don’t have the scale of large companies, they manage, through their ability to adapt, to overcome challenges offered by the market they are acting. The fact that their...