Journal: Contributions to Management Science

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Springer

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1431-1941
2197-716X

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Publications 1 - 6 of 6
  • Introduction
    Item type: Book Chapter
    Ambühl, Michael; Brusoni, Stefano; Niedworok, Anja; et al. (2024)
    Contributions to Management Science ~ Cooperatives in an Uncertain World: Perspectives from Switzerland and Its Neighbors
    This book explores how cooperatives can and are meeting the challenges of a changing world. While concepts to describe the dire and unpredictable state of our world have proliferated—VUCA (Bennis & Nanus, 2007), poly-crisis (WEF), tipping-point (Lenton et al., 2019), wicked problems (Reinecke & Ansari, 2016), grand societal challenges (Ferraro et al., 2015), to name but a few—scientists across diverse disciplines are clear that the present is a particularly perilous time for our global civilization. Climate change has already begun to impose severe human and financial costs across the world. Digitalization has changed how we do business and relate to one another, in some cases, such as with generative AI, essentially overnight. At the same time, violent conflict and geopolitical tensions are again affecting the lives of millions. Across a host of other social, economic, and ecological themes—such as gender equality, poverty, and deforestation—our progress has stalled, if not reversed, as measured by the Sustainable Development Goals (Gutmann & Gorman, 2022).
  • The Evolution and Evaluation of the Italian Legislation on Social Cooperatives and Social Enterprises: Facilitator or Obstacle to Their Diffusion?
    Item type: Book Chapter
    Velmer, Silvia (2024)
    Contributions to Management Science ~ Cooperatives in an Uncertain World: Perspectives from Switzerland and Its Neighbors
    Historically, the Italian cooperative movement has represented a pivotal backbone of the national economy, since cooperatives were able to satisfy their members' needs through the provision of products and services at affordable conditions. Started as grassroot organizations to answer local social needs, social cooperatives have become key actors in the provision of welfare services in Italy over the last decades. The legal acknowledgment came long after the establishment of social cooperatives in the civil society and the legal framework defined social cooperatives as the first multistakeholder entrepreneurial form with a social mission, rather than a profit maximization objective. Several laws on socially-oriented organizations have followed. Over time, social cooperatives have progressively accomplished the social mission of cooperative organizations, while cooperatives are more focused on growth. In the context of grand societal challenges, the strong orientation of social cooperatives on their social impact and their embeddedness in the local territory supports them in the development and implementation of local resolution to these global challenges.
  • Balancing Flexibility and Stability: Leveraging Cooperatives for Organizational Resilience
    Item type: Book Chapter
    Isenring, Kata (2024)
    Contributions to Management Science ~ Cooperatives in an Uncertain World: Perspectives from Switzerland and Its Neighbors
    This chapter provides an overview of recent developments in resilience research in organization and management studies, with a particular focus on cooperatives. The chapter highlights the importance of moving away from understanding resilience as a defensive and reactive measure and emphasizes the need for organizations to proactively design their capabilities to anticipate and respond effectively to adverse events while reducing overall vulnerability. Cooperatives, owing to their democratic principles, shared ownership, and community engagement, have developed organizational traits that foster resilience. The chapter presents three cases of the cooperative logics that demonstrate how organizations have leveraged their historical and structural factors to build problem-solving and adaptive capabilities that enable them to anticipate and respond effectively to adverse events while reducing overall vulnerability. The chapter concludes by discussing how decision makers across various organizational contexts can gain insights into how to balance flexibility and stability and develop their own resilience-enhancing logics and practices by examining the experiences of cooperatives.
  • The Swiss Cooperative Landscape: A Quantitative and Qualitative Overview
    Item type: Book Chapter
    Gutmann, Martin; Niedworok, Anja (2024)
    Contributions to Management Science ~ Cooperatives in an Uncertain World: Perspectives from Switzerland and Its Neighbors
    Cooperatives play an important role in the Swiss society. Swiss cooperatives can be found in cities as well as rural Alpine areas, from nationwide organizations to small, less corporate-like ones. This chapter illustrates the diversity of Swiss cooperatives today through a quantitative and qualitative lens. The first section gives an overview of Swiss cooperatives today in terms of numbers and distribution along geographic groupings, economic activity, size, and economic impact as well as their public perception and recent media resonance. The second part of the chapter sketches how various cooperatives are coping with a challenging and changing economic landscape. This includes a discussion of how large and established cooperatives are evolving, using a case as an example, and an examination of how smaller cooperatives are adapting and sometimes thriving in new, socially critical areas: farming, housing, and energy. Finally, the conclusion summarizes key findings and what the future may hold.
  • Cooperatives in an Uncertain World
    Item type: Edited Volume
    (2024)
    Contributions to Management Science
    This book focuses on different aspects of cooperatives in Switzerland and its neighboring countries, and their contribution to meeting overarching societal challenges. It seeks to identify how cooperatives can tackle grand societal challenges and extends the body of research on cooperatives. The discussions are highlighted in the context of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. The respective chapters cover topics such as cooperatives in Switzerland (historical roots, current landscape, embeddedness in profit/nonprofit organizations, participatory governance and legal aspects), grand societal challenges and cooperatives, and the future with and of cooperatives.
  • Participation in Participatory Governance: Cooperatives in a Swiss Context
    Item type: Book Chapter
    Bolli, Monique (2024)
    Contributions to Management Science ~ Cooperatives in an Uncertain World: Perspectives from Switzerland and Its Neighbors
    Swiss cooperatives are currently in focus: while a number of legal framework amendments are on the way, still little research is done on this form of corporate governance. In the current urgency of addressing grand challenges, cooperatives have regained importance in the economic and societal landscapes. Comprehensive data-driven studies would support legislative modernization. Participatory governance is a conspicuous characteristic of cooperatives. The type and levels of participation are idiosyncratic to a given cooperative and hence exist in various forms. Our anthropological interview-based research yields three tensions. First, participation does not imply inclusion; second, cooperatives can be perceived as outdated, yet they evolve and experiment with forms; third, both idealist and pragmatic approaches are required to sustain the business and address any mission drift. The above enhances the comprehension of the cooperative form, challenging the perceived outdatedness of this hybrid-missioned entrepreneurship.
Publications 1 - 6 of 6