Ownership, Governance and Related Trade-Offs in Agricultural Cooperatives

Abstract

Agricultural cooperatives represent a key institutional arrangement in the world food and agriculture industries. Understanding these business organizations by adopting multi-disciplinary perspectives serves both scholarly and societal needs. This article addresses two issues: (1) how agricultural cooperatives choose from a plethora of ownership and governance features and (2) what are the main trade-offs cooperatives face in making these choices. Both issues have important implications for the efficiency of collective entrepreneurship organizations in food supply chains and thus for food nutrition security and food quality. The article proffers observations based on the extant literature and the author’s field experience. It is concluded that agricultural cooperatives choose ownership and governance features in an attempt to attract risk capital for investments while optimizing collective decision-making efficiency. The main trade-offs that cooperatives address while making these choices are between (1) investor mentality and member-patron control, (2) organizational complexity and vagueness of ownership rights, (3) the need for risk capital and member control, (4) organizational complexity and member control and (5) management monitoring costs and the costs of collective decision-making. These observations are highly relevant for organizational scholars, cooperative practitioners and policymakers as they inform decision-making in cooperatives in more than one way.