Multi-stakeholder Governance in Cooperative Organizations: Toward a New Framework for Research

Abstract

Despite the increasing popularity of multi-stakeholder cooperatives, social-economy researchers largely predict that these organizations will fail. Using a “cost of decision-making” approach, these researchers conclude that the governance structure of multi-stakeholder cooperatives makes this organizational model fundamentally untenable. In this paper, we review the empirical evidence available on multi-stakeholder cooperatives, which suggests that different groups of actors are able to govern themselves successfully. Consequently, we argue that the literature that has focused on the management of common pool resources by self-organized groups may be an appropriate body of literature in which to root a research program on these social-economy organizations.