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Cooperatives

  • Living reference work entry
  • First Online:
Encyclopedia of Sustainable Management

  • 63 Accesses

Synonyms

Cooperatives; Coops; Co-ops

Definition

A cooperative, according to the International Co-operative Alliance, is defined as “an autonomous association of persons united voluntarily to meet their common economic, social, and cultural needs and aspirations through a jointly-owned and democratically-controlled enterprise” (ICA 2015, p. 2).

Cooperatives are founded as private initiative enterprises to respond to single or multiple common needs of a group of individuals (Hansmann 1988). The special features of cooperatives are two. The first is that all members have the capacity to take place in the process of decision-making and governance (International Co-operative Alliance 2015; Matten and Crane 2005; Stanton 1986). The second is that the members of a cooperative are either the consumers or the workers and not capital investors (ICA 2015; Zeuli and Cropp 2004). The interests of the cooperative, therefore, coincide with those of the users.

There are different types of cooperative:...

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References

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Fondazione Marco Biagi, Università degli Studi di Modena e Reggio Emilia, Modena, Italy

    Andrea Girardi

Authors
  1. Andrea Girardi
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Andrea Girardi .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. London Metropolitan University, Guildhall Faculty of Business and Law London Metropolitan University, London, UK

    Samuel Idowu

  2. Cologne Business School, Ingolstadt, Germany

    René Schmidpeter

  3. College of Business, Loyola University New Orleans, New Orleans, LA, USA

    Nicholas Capaldi

  4. International Training Centre of the IL, International Labor Organization, Turin, Italy

    Liangrong Zu

  5. Department of Economics, Society and Politics, University of Urbino Carlo Bo, Urbino, Italy

    Mara Del Baldo

  6. Instituto Politécnico da Guarda, Guarda, Portugal

    Rute Abreu

Section Editor information

  1. Faculty of Education, University of Oulu, Oulu, Finland

    Eila Jeronen

  2. Faculty of Educational Sciences, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland

    Eila Jeronen

  3. Faculty of Education, University of Lapland, Rovaniemi, Finland

    Eila Jeronen

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Girardi, A. (2020). Cooperatives. In: Idowu, S., Schmidpeter, R., Capaldi, N., Zu, L., Del Baldo, M., Abreu, R. (eds) Encyclopedia of Sustainable Management. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02006-4_702-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02006-4_702-1

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-02006-4

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-02006-4

  • eBook Packages: Springer Reference Business and ManagementReference Module Humanities and Social SciencesReference Module Business, Economics and Social Sciences

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