Analysing Organizational Performance in Village Co-Operatives

This article attempts to explain levels of organizational performance in Indian village co-operatives using insights from some thirty recent case studies. It suggests that underperformance in co-operatives can be traced to failures in one or more of the five interacting sub-systems that a co-operative is composed of as a human organization: namely, governing structure, operating system, critical linkages, patronage system and the micro-environment.The article then argues that while isolated examples may be found of co-operatives which are successful because of their managers or their particular context for sources of large-scale improvements in the general performance of co-operatives, we would have to look to major improvements in the design of co-operative systems and the macro-environment within which they operate. Finally, the article lists a set of design principles emerging from the framework evolved in the paper.The basic fieldwork underlying this paper was undertaken by the authors and students of...