The Status of Research on Cooperative Banking in Europe and its Future Directions

After showing remarkable resilience to the negative effects of the 2007-2009 global financial crisis, cooperative banks have undergone a process of reform and structural consolidation almost everywhere in Europe over the past decade. Recognizing these changes, the paper provides an account of the main concepts and trends in research that has focused on cooperative banks since 2010. At the same time, it sketches current trends with an aim to anticipate new research trajectories by setting some directions for new research efforts on cooperative banks operating in Europe. Sustainability, green finance and digitalisation are all concepts that have recently emerged in cooperative-banking-related research and which shall be further investigated in relation to their business model. Other potentially fruitful research topics include an investigation into the critical elements of the cooperative model of bank governance as well as the multifaceted differences between the cooperative bank patterns in Europe, which still need to be properly understood and assessed