The purpose of consumer co-operation: implications for the management and governance of co-operatives

摘要

Extant research on consumer co-operation has acknowledged that the corporate purpose ofconsumer co-operatives deviates significantly from the purpose of investor-owned firms(IOFs – the dominant form in market economies and in theory development in the field ofbusiness economics) and also suggested that the management of consumer co-operativesdiffers from the management of IOFs. Despite this, there is a scarcity of research focusing onthe management of consumer co-operatives in general and the ways this different purposemanifests in their management in particular. In other words, research on consumer cooperativeshas only started to discover the importance of identifying the premises of theseorganizations and generating management and organization theories that take them intoaccount.The overall objective of this study is to map out some of the implications that the purpose ofconsumer co-operation has for the management and governance of consumer co-operatives.To put it more precisely, by combining interview data gathered from Finnish consumer cooperatives(S Group, OP Bank Group and POP Bank) and extant literature, this study aims togenerate or elaborate on definitions and outlines of the features that co-operative purposeposes for the strategic management, governance and managerial competence needed forconsumer co-operatives.The study consists of two parts. The first part introduces the research topic, methods andpublications, as well as discusses the overall outcomes. The second part consists of fourpublications that address the research questions from different viewpoints. The analyses ofthis study indicate that due to the purpose of consumer co-operation, the roles of locality andregionality become emphasized in their management. While locality and regionality arepotential sources of competitive advantage for consumer co-operatives, geographic boundnesssets significant boundary conditions for the strategic management of these organizations.Further, the purpose of consumer co-operation may pose several challenges to governance andset specific competence demands for the managers of these organizations. Associating theobservations from various streams of research on management and governance with thepurpose of consumer co-operation and examining these issues further, the thesis contributes toelaboration of theory in the field. While the thesis is by no means comprehensive (but insteadreflects a co-operative research project in its early stages), it does shed light on some keyideas of management and governance and offers leads to theory and, thereby, will proveuseful to elaborators, disseminators and appliers of knowledge on co-operation.