Accountability and Transparency in Cooperatives: A Comparative Analysis between Portugal and Germany

Abstract

This study aims to assess whether the legislation on internal and external supervisory mechanisms in force for German cooperatives allows for a more adequate accountability and transparency in terms of financial reporting compared to the model adopted in Portugal. For this purpose, and through a qualitative methodology, using the content analysis technique and the multiple case study model, total and partial compliance indexes were constructed by country to assess the cooperatives' transparency and accountability in the selected sample. The results show that the analysed cooperatives present a compliance index higher than 50% in all the selected categories. However, in all categories, German cooperatives present a higher percentage than Portuguese cooperatives, thus leading to the main conclusion that the German model of internal and external supervision provides a higher level of accountability and transparency.