Abstract This study examines the relationship between corporate governance gender diversity and employee productivity (EP) within Spanish labour societies, a core component of the social economy (SE). The primary objective is to determine how gender diversity on boards of directors and executive committees is associated with productivity, while exploring the moderating role of female leadership. Using a quantitative design, we analysed panel data from the ORBIS database for a balanced sample of 1329 labour societies. Fixed‐effects panel regression models, controlling for firm age, capital intensity and leverage, were employed to assess these relationships. Results indicate that both board and executive gender diversity have a positive, statistically significant association with EP. Notably, this relationship is not significantly moderated by the presence of a female chair or CEO. This suggests the benefits of gender heterogeneity are structural and independent of the leader's gender, though a female chair is independently associated with increased productivity. The originality of this research lies in its focus on labour societies, a governance model rarely explored in diversity literature. By investigating gender diversity and leadership within the SE, this study extends existing theories to a participatory business model, offering novel evidence on inclusive governance and firm performance.
Abstract We sketch a first‐ever map of the scholarly literature on co‐operatives and public policy from a selection of English‐language studies published since 2000 using a scoping review methodology. We find that while co‐operatives are often framed as solutions to societal problems, few scholars draw on formal public policy theories. We also observe that scholars concern themselves largely with a small set of jurisdictions (the United States, Brazil, the United Kingdom and Canada) but ignore places like New Zealand that are also English‐speaking and have sizeable co‐operative sectors. We observe that although scholars have tended to focus on a relatively narrow set of policy‐relevant areas of co‐operative activity (e.g., agriculture, credit and housing), we also witness the emergence of a growing literature on energy co‐operatives. Finally, we identify a preponderance of scholarship anchored in traditional governance frameworks (e.g., principal‐agent and stakeholder theories) but also an emergent and growing scholarship that applies Ostrom's common‐pool resource framing to the study of co‐operatives and public policy. Our findings suggest that the study of co‐operatives and public policy is a rich area for further investigation, if only to inform policymakers and international agencies who, with or without supporting scholarship, continue to view co‐operatives as tools of public policy.
Traditional bankruptcy literature has primarily focused on commercial enterprises, often overlooking the unique dynamics of cooperatives and other small organizations. This study addresses this g ap by developing a predictive model for insolvency risk within Brazil's supplementary health sector, encompassing both for-profit and not-for-profit healthcare insurers, with a newly curated dataset comprising a total of 684 Brazilian private healthcare medic plan operators in a 10-year span, from 2014 to 2023. For the first time, the financial resilience of cooperatives is quantified, demonstrating that these entities exhibit a significantly lower insolvency risk compared to other organizational forms. This finding is further supported through a propensity score matching analysis. In addition, total debt and administrative expenses were also identified as significant determinants of insolvency risk. From a methodological standpoint, the use of a generalized additive model made it possible to address the limitations of generalized linear models, enabling the incorporation of the non-linear relationships between financial and governance variables on the risk of insolvency.
Guided by behavioural economics, this paper examines the factors shaping members' investments in tradable and appreciable preferred shares issued by their cooperatives. These shares possess characteristics of both bonds and long-term equity, and when tradable, they acquire a market value that helps mitigate issues related to the vaguely defined property rights of cooperatives. Using survey data from 1124 members of Sweden's two largest agricultural cooperatives, we analyse how investment decisions are related to trust in the cooperative, membership duration and knowledge of preferred shares, which we interpret within a behavioural framework related to risk perception. A two-step regression approach, binary logit for participation and generalized ordered logistic regression for investment levels, reveals that higher trust, longer membership and greater knowledge are associated with a higher likelihood of investing. Conditional on participation, membership duration and knowledge remain positively associated with higher investment levels, whereas trust does not. These findings provide insights for cooperatives seeking to mobilize capital while maintaining member control. They highlight the behavioural mechanisms underlying investment decisions in cooperative finance.
This article examines how urban inequalities influence the Social and Solidarity Economy (SSE) through a study of two Barcelona neighbourhoods. It evaluates the limitations of SSE promotion policies implemented between 2016 and 2024, focusing on their impact on diversifying socio-enterprise initiatives and fostering cooperative ecosystems with ecological and democratic orientations. The research combines sociodemographic analysis, georeferencing of social-economy initiatives and thematic categorization of economic activities, complemented by tools developed within the SSE sector to characterize organizational structures. Findings reveal strong sectoral differentiation: in Sants, cooperative activity centres on housing, social innovation and consultancy, while in Poble-sec, initiatives emphasize care, community health and food services. These contrasts reflect distinct institutional trajectories and pre-existing socioeconomic conditions. The study concludes that current SSE policies have not reversed urban inequality dynamics or equitably diversified local economic ecosystems. It argues for policy approaches grounded in an understanding of how urban inequalities shape civic participation and local economies, and for fostering complementarities that enable the development of a rich, diverse cooperative ecosystem.
In conventional firms (CFs), workers are unlikely to accept pay and hour reductions in order to secure their jobs, in particular because of information asymmetry. A specific type of firm is not subject to this information asymmetry problem because workers make decisions and share profits: worker cooperatives. In this paper, we use an exhaustive employer-employee panel French dataset in order to compare systematically adjustment to demand shocks in worker cooperatives and CFs. We find that, when faced with the same variation of demand, worker cooperatives have more stable employment and more variable pay. However, we show that this employment stability in cooperatives benefits primarily men and employees in low-skill jobs.
From the perspective of dynamic capabilities, this study investigates how capabilities shape the operational performance of agricultural cooperatives in Guangdong Province, China. Using survey data from 286 cooperatives, a structural equation model and a moderated mediation model were constructed to assess the joint effects of ordinary and dynamic capabilities. The results indicate that improvements in ordinary capabilities (e.g., technical and marketing capabilities) and dynamic capabilities (e.g., acquisition, integration, learning and innovation) both significantly enhance cooperative performance. Mediation analysis further shows that dynamic capabilities improve the operational performance indirectly by strengthening ordinary capabilities, supporting the theoretical view that capability development is cumulative and path-dependent. Moreover, the moderated mediation model reveals that environmental stability amplifies the indirect effect of dynamic capabilities on the operational performance through ordinary capabilities. Under conditions of low environmental dynamism, dynamic capabilities more effectively convert acquired knowledge into practical operational skills, particularly technical and marketing competences, thereby contributing to sustainable performance. These findings extend dynamic capability theory to the cooperative sector and underscore that, in increasingly complex environments, cooperatives must simultaneously cultivate ordinary and dynamic capabilities to sustain resilience, competitiveness and long-term performance.
Since 2007, the Spanish State's contribution to funding the Catholic Church comes from what is known as the 'tax allocation' (asignaci & oacute;n tributaria). It is a pure system of percentage tax designation consisting of 0.7% of the tax liability of taxpayers who decide to tick the relevant box on their personal income tax form. From this system, taxpayers may also choose instead, or additionally, to allocate the same percentage to other activities considered of social interest or may choose not to tick either box. In this last case, they waive the option of contributing part of their tax liability directly to religious or social entities. Based on a database published by the Spanish Tax Agency, and applying ordinary least squares techniques, the present paper obtains the profile of taxpayers who opt for each of these alternatives. The results suggest the existence of two clearly delimited and opposing profiles of taxpayers: On the one hand, those who do not tick any tax allocation box or tick both; on the other hand, those who tick only one box, either the one for the Catholic Church or the one for other purposes of social interest.
The COVID-19 pandemic has severely impacted the external environment of social service non-profit organizations (NPOs), resulting in diverse management challenges. Our study investigates how social service NPOs in Austria experienced these challenges and how they developed internal coping mechanisms. We distinguished four phases of the pandemic (March 2020 to February 2021) and conducted interviews with 33 managers of 14 NPOs. Thus, our research contributes to a phase-oriented view of the impact of COVID-19. Applying the contingency approach, coping mechanisms are clustered into groups and transferred into a framework of organizational characteristics depending on the changing environment of NPOs. As coping mechanisms, the implementation of new structures and digitalization, the implementation of a task force, leadership, teamwork and communication competencies were found to be essential for the organizations.
Ecuador's 2008 Constitution advanced an ambitious substantive economic vision through Buen Vivir (Good Living), recognizing a plural economy which encompasses private, public and solidarity economy (SE) sectors. This paper aims to analyze public procurement programs in Ecuador, one of the flagship Buen Vivir policies for SE promotion. Drawing on Polanyi's distinction between formal (market-centric) and substantive (life-sustaining, socially embedded) conceptions of the economy, we analyze the evaluation criteria governing SE organizations' access to public procurement. Based on qualitative research during Ecuador's SE promotion momentum (2008-2017)-including 31 interviews with government officials and SE organization members, documentary analysis and observation-we examine four criteria: installed capacity, territorial scope, associativity, and positive discrimination. Our findings reveal systematic tensions between substantive policy discourse and formal implementation practices. Evaluation criteria privilege technification, formalization and bureaucratic compliance over traditional knowledge, solidarity networks and participatory democracy, reinforcing rather than challenging market rationalities. We reveal an institutionalization paradox: policies designed to support alternative economic models inadvertently reproduce the market rationalities they seek to transcend, confining SE to subsidiary roles. Our analysis uncovers deeper epistemic and institutional barriers to realizing economic plurality through state policy and offers insights into SE institutionalization challenges globally.
The United Nations defined the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in 2015. As a result, an increasing number of companies have integrated sustainable development practices into their activities with the aim of contributing to the SDGs achievement. Similarly, the SDGs implementation becomes an opportunity for companies, since the creation of social and environmental value simultaneously increases economic and financial value. The contribution of cooperative and social economy firms to the SDGs formulation and implementation is noteworthy within the business sphere. The present study aims to identify the existing gaps in the extant literature on management and SDGs applied to cooperative and social economy firms. To this end, the authors conduct a qualitative analysis of published papers on this topic. To do so, the current work performs a bibliometric analysis using a range of scientific databases (WoS, Scopus) over the time period 2015–2023, together with VOSViewer software. Thus, this study identifies the main methodologies employed in previous studies on this topic and the results obtained. This paper evidences the scarcity of published papers analysing the relationship between cooperative management, social economy firms and sustainability as a core strategy.
Smallholder market participation studies often focus narrowly on selling decisions, overlooking the institutional role of agricultural cooperatives, particularly in contexts like Rwanda, where cooperatives underpin agricultural policy. Consequently, empirical evidence on how cooperative membership shapes farmers’ commercialization across institutional engagement, market entry and sales intensity remains limited. To address this gap, we apply a Bayesian triple-hurdle model to survey data from 615 rural maize farmers in Rwanda to analyse factors associated with three sequential decisions: whether to join a cooperative, whether to participate in maize markets, and the quantity of maize sold. Our results show that formal education, access to credit, agroforestry adoption and extension services consistently drive the likelihood of both cooperative membership and market participation. In contrast, household and farm size significantly influence the intensity of market participation but not initial cooperative entry. Geographic disparities also emerge, with farmers in districts with stronger market access or better infrastructure more likely to participate and to sell larger volumes. These findings highlight the need for integrated policy interventions that simultaneously promote cooperative participation, market access, and production capacity through strengthened rural education, expanded extension services and improved financial access for inclusive smallholder commercialization in Rwanda and other cooperative-driven agricultural economies.
This study investigates the interplay between income inequality, health spending and patient mobility within the context of the Italian healthcare system. By analysing a balanced panel of 15 Italian regions from 2003 to 2019, we examine how income inequality influences regional health expenditure policies and moderates the relationship between interregional compensation for patient mobility and public health spending. Our findings indicate that both income inequality and patient mobility shape regional health spending decisions. Specifically, the analysis reveals that higher income inequality tends to be associated with greater health expenditure, whereas credits from interregional health mobility exhibit a positive association with spending, albeit with varying intensity based on the level of regional income inequality. Importantly, our analysis reveals that the effectiveness of mobility-based credits in supporting healthcare spending weakens in regions with high income inequality, suggesting that regional disparities can limit the financial benefits of patient mobility inflows. These results underscore the potential risks of further decentralizing healthcare governance in Italy, in the light of the complex interplay between patient mobility, health spending and income inequality at regional level, highlighting the need for targeted policies to mitigate the negative externalities of patient migration and promote equitable healthcare provision across regions.
In this article, we discuss the importance of conducting sustainability assessments of the strategies implemented by cooperatives, guided by the local perspective of sustainability. From a participatory approach, we described the strategies of three export-oriented organic coffee cooperatives located in five municipalities in Chiapas, Mexico. A definition of agricultural sustainability was co-constructed from the perspective of local actors and a sustainability assessment of 139 producers was carried out. Using the MESMIS framework, we established a set of indicators and constructed indices for the dimensions of productivity, economic viability, adaptive management, and family involvement. Our results showed that conducting sustainability assessments based on the concept co-constructed by local actors offers various advantages, such as territorial relevance, recognition of local knowledge and easier indicator development. Additionally, the sustainability assessment results showed significant variations in performance across dimensions among producers in each organization, which is linked to the cooperatives’ priorities in achieving sustainability. These findings contribute to the discussion on the importance of clarifying guiding concepts from a local perspective in relation to the normative concept of sustainable development.
This study examines the influence of environmental taxes on the shadow economy for a global sample of 61 countries in two subsamples (high-income group—HIG and low- and middle-income group—LMG) with data available from 2002 to 2018. Environmental taxes are found to increase the shadow economy significantly across the globe and two subsamples. The proportion of the shadow economy of GDP rises by about 0.201 percentage points on average when the environment taxes to GDP ratio increases by one percentage point. We use a simultaneous equations model to delve into the mechanisms through which environmental taxes might exert their influence, which we find to be transmitted through two main channels, namely, unemployment and the tax burden. Increases in environmental taxes cause higher unemployment and increase the tax burden, resulting in greater informal economic activities. Interestingly, among the four different forms of environmental taxes, an energy tax expands the shadow economy consistently across samples. Pollution and resource taxes have a positive effect on the shadow economy, primarily in HIG. Taxes on energy appear to increase unemployment and then cause an increase in the size of the shadow economy. In contrast, taxes on pollution, resources and transport seem to be associated with a higher tax burden, which causes an increase in the size of the shadow economy. In general, a crucial policy consideration involves the careful selection of environmentally related taxes that do not disrupt primary economic activities. The findings also suggest that the implementation of environmental taxes should be accompanied by policies designed to mitigate the potential adverse impacts on unemployment and the tax burden, both of which can impose significant societal costs.
A government can establish a 'national benefit-cost analysis (BCA) system' by (1) mandating through either executive or legislative action that BCA be conducted for some designated set of public investments and regulations and (2) creating an institutional structure to support this legal or administrative requirement for the regular, ongoing evaluation of the benefits and costs of new proposed investments and regulations. This paper describes 12 issues that should be considered in the design and establishment of a national BCA analysis system and 4 approaches for combining these 12 design decisions to craft a strategy for establishing a national BCA system. The literature suggests that the results of 'standalone' BCAs are not highly valued or used by decision-makers. This is in part because the quality of BCAs is often poor due to a lack of qualified analysts to conduct BCAs, analysts' overly optimistic estimates of benefits and underestimates of costs, and analysts' strategic misrepresentation of results. This paper suggests that a well-designed national BCA system-assisted by generative AI-may be able to overcome some of the problems associated with 'standalone' BCAs.
Global political and economic tensions can produce relevant consequences across Europe. This paper provides novel evidence on the costs of geopolitical risk (GPR) in the European Union countries, that of a reduced effectiveness of regional policies. Using cohesion policy data for the period 2007-2020 and adopting a panel-time series heterogeneous coefficient model, we show that the impact of European Union cohesion funds on economic growth is reduced by about 0.45-0.55 percentage points when considering GPR. The adverse effects of GPR vary across European countries depending on specific factors, such as participation to global value chains and internal political risks. Our findings point out the need of coordinating different Union-wide policies to improve the effectiveness of the structural funds.
An important debate in the field of strategy and industrial organization economics has long focused on whether the industry environment or firm idiosyncrasies have a greater impact on firm performance. However, cooperatives have been excluded from this inquiry, despite profits being the primary means to achieve their social objectives. This article examines the relative impact of firm and industry effects on cooperative profitability and compares these effects with those in investor-owned firms (IOFs). Additionally, it analyses how generalized economic adversity impacts the relative importance of firm and industry effects on cooperative profitability and compares these changes with those in IOFs. Using multilevel modelling, the study analyses around 8,678 Spanish cooperatives and equivalent IOFs from 2008 to 2023. The findings indicate that industry-level factors account for a greater share of profitability variation in cooperatives than in IOFs, whereas firm-specific effects are comparatively weaker. These patterns are accentuated during periods of economic recession, suggesting that cooperatives are more sensitive to sectoral conditions under adverse macroeconomic contexts.
Democracy, social commitment and proximity are fundamental values of cooperative-based financial institutions. The degree of cooperativism of an entity (or, by extension, of a territorial area or country) can be associated with the intensity with which the entity promotes the inherent values of cooperatives. This paper aims to analyse what we call the degree of cooperativism of cooperative banks at the European level by proposing a ranking of countries and entities based on a synthetic index. Using data from recent years published by the European Association of Cooperative Banks, we propose a cooperativism index considering democratic, proximity-related and economic aspects. The proposed synthetic index offers the advantage of integrating different ethical and economic principles, such as the principle of maximum efficiency or the principle of maximum fairness. The results show that Austria is the country where the degree of cooperativism is most developed according to the proposed index.
This introductory article examines the relationship between gender and the social economy (SE) within the broader context of alternative forms of business and organization. Building on recent research and insights from the diverse contributions gathered in this special issue, the analysis aims to identify key gender-related challenges facing SE organizations, including the persistence of structural inequalities, the underrepresentation of women and gender minorities in leadership and decision-making, the undervaluation of care work and the reproduction of traditional gender norms even within democratic governance models. Analysed through the lenses of feminist economics and intersectionality, these challenges reveal both the transformative potential and the internal tensions of the social and solidarity economy. They also highlight how feminist and cooperative principles can converge to promote equity, participation, and sustainability, while underscoring the need for intersectional, evidence-based approaches and institutional reforms to achieve genuine equality. By bringing these perspectives together, the special issue advances current debates on how the SSE can foster gender justice and democratic renewal across economic sectors.
