Originating from a bold idea, Organic Valley currently reigns as the largest organic cooperative in North America. In 1988, from the non-glaciated, hilly part of Southwestern Wisconsin, seven progressive rural entrepreneurs started a courageous and visionary journey. The founders’ original...

The earliest state cooperative laws in the United States were stock laws modeled upon the Rochdale experience and were adaptations of basic corporate laws of incorporation to the cooperative form of organization. They emphasized stock as the basis of membership and the distribution of profits to...

Mintzburg’s managerial working role model is used to explore the ways roles and behavior of the general manager of a user-oriented firm differ from those of the manager of an investor-owned firm (IOF). It is argued that, in the roles of conflict resolution, resource allocation,...

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...

Abstract—Existing research treats the cooperative structure as relatively homogeneous. The proposed paper argues that all cooperatives are not created equal – and consideration of organizational structure is critical when analyzing the economic impact of cooperation. In recent empirical...

This paper examines agricultural cooperative organizational models from an ownership rights perspective. Building upon property rights and incomplete contracts theories of the firm, the paper adopts a definition of ownership rights comprising both residual claim and control rights. We argue that...

It is commonly argued in the literature that agricultural cooperatives are financially constrained because they are unable to acquire sufficient risk capital to invest in productive assets. This study examines whether agricultural cooperatives' investment is constrained by estimating...

The objective of this study is to determine if there is a dominant free riding activity which can be identified and used as the basis for measuring free riding, or if multiple free riding actions and/or behaviors coexist within large collective action organizations. The study uses a confirmatory...

In this paper, we address the issue of financial constraints in agricultural cooperatives. We estimate an augmented Q investment model for a large sample of US agricultural cooperatives and test whether cooperative investment is sensitive to cash flow. Empirical results suggest that agricultural...