The Emergence of Non-Traditional Cooperative Structures: Public and Private Policy Issues

This paper examines new agricultural cooperative organizational models from an ownership rights perspective. We argue that new cooperative organizational models differ in the way ownership rights are assigned to the economic agents tied contractually to the firm � members, patrons, and investors. The paper proposes a typology of discrete organizational models, in which the traditional cooperative structure and the investor-oriented firm are characterized as polar forms. Five non-traditional models are described and analyzed with implications to both private and public policy.