An exploratory study of ownership and governance interrelationships in traditional and hybrid farmer cooperatives

Abstract

By conceptualizing farmer cooperatives as systems of attributes, this paper explores possible combinations and complementarities between ownership and governance characteristics to inform common responses to increases in member heterogeneity and industry competition. With an empirical study of survey data from U.S. farmer cooperatives, a strong general complementarity is found between the pursuit of investor‐oriented objectives and the delegation of control to decision specialists with specific knowledge. The novel result indicates many farmer cooperatives make sacrifices in user ownership and user control, which in theory improves competitiveness but also further complicates the conceptualization of cooperative performance, survival, and longevity.