Publications

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…

Il paper esplora il ruolo del Terzo settore nell'integrazione socio-sanitaria e evidenzia esperienze virtuose in diverse regioni italiane in cui queste realtà hanno svolto un ruolo propulsivo.

Il paper esplora il meccanismo di coordinamento per la produzione culturale, focalizzandosi sull'approccio innovativo di amministrazione condivisa e politica culturale del Trentino.

The aim of the paper is to address the possible implications of the principle of “shared administration” for the emergence of new forms of empowerment of social actors able to promote distributed models of self-determination and democratic exercise of power as an alternative to top- down bureaucracy.

In the last twenty years, the interest of researchers, policy makers, national and international institutions and society in general has been growing in organizations and enterprises set up and managed in a participatory manner by non-investor actors and whose object is not the profit but rather the response to a…

Questo paper intende approfondire le caratteristiche salienti dell’economia sociale in Trentino attraverso i dati del Censimento permanente delle istituzioni non profit dell’Istat.

Il working paper presenta risultati di una ricerca sul volontariato culturale e nello specifico analizza la natura delle bande e il loro ruolo all’interno della comunità trentina.

This work is part of the literature that recognizes the crucial role of an ethical evaluation in the financial sector and investigates the aspects related to the social and environmental impact of economic activities.

Lack of credit for farming is one of the main obstacles that poor Thai farmers face. Most agricultural credits from commercial banks are given to large agricultural businesses thus leaving out poor farmers who consequently have to borrow from informal sources with high interest rates.

In Italia, lavoratrici e lavoratori a rischio disoccupazione hanno la possibilità di salvaguardare il proprio posto di lavoro, i livelli occupazionali dell’azienda in crisi ed i rispettivi asset produttivi. Infatti, tali dipendenti possono riavviare ed acquisire le aziende in crisi da cui provengono, trasformandole in aziende democratiche e cooperative, e…

A partire da una ricostruzione dei principali limiti degli attuali sistemi di welfare locale, nel paper vengono approfonditi gli elementi alla base di un diverso modello di sanità territoriale, fondato sull’integrazione fra ambiti sociale e sanitario e sulla partecipazione delle comunità territoriali alla definizione delle politiche e dei servizi.

The Mondragon Corporation is an umbrella organisation for nearly 100 separate self-governing worker cooperatives that together employ over 81,000 workers (2019). Being mainly located in the Spanish Basque region, the group’s cooperatives operate throughout the world, with 141 production plants in 37 countries, commercial businesses in 53, and sales in…

  Anecdotal evidence describes how co-operatives are facing a financial crunch, particularly since the economic crash of 2008. Co-operatives are considered to be at greater risk and less profitable than other companies because of the constraints on redistribution of profits and the choice to employ the most vulnerable workers. Moreover,…

A cura di: Ester Gubert Il paper affronta il tema del sostegno alla domiciliarità degli anziani fragili i cui bisogni non trovano adeguata risposta nell’offerta formale, di natura prestazionale e concentrata sulla non autosufficienza, e spesso nemmeno all’interno della famiglia, che ha una morfologia sempre più inconciliabile con il modello…

The creation of cooperative forms of organisations and a proper structuring of them is required for achieving this objective of reaching out to the local community. This paper is an attempt to analyse the structure and functioning of credit cooperatives in India and to assess to what extent the same is conducive for connecting the local societies.

Il lavoro analizza in che modo i beni culturali e, più specificamente, i beni storico-archeologici possano rappresentare un potente driver di sviluppo locale.

Il presente articolo intende approfondire il ruolo delle diverse forme di impresa nel sistema economico trentino, per fornire successivamente una valutazione comparata, dapprima, con la vicina provincia di Bolzano e, in seguito, con l’intera economia italiana.

Nel saggio, dopo aver individuato le ragioni che spiegano la crescita del terzo settore, se ne ricostruisce la dimensione economica e si analizza se e in che misura la riforma ne ha colto le specificità ed è riuscita a porre le basi per un suo ulteriore rafforzamento.

Edited by: Federica D’Isanto and Salvatore Di Martino Individuals engage in daily behaviours that are often at issue with self-interest and rationality.  This paper supports the thesis of inadequacy of the homo oeconomicus model, providing results of a field experiment conducted in the city of Naples (Italy) on the practice…

Edited by: Donald A. R. George, Eddi Fontanari, Ermanno Celeste Tortia Standard economic theory predicts that the accumulation of capital by means of indivisible reserves would lead to underinvestment and undercapitalization due to the truncated temporal horizon of worker-members in cooperatives (the so-called “Furubotn-Pejovich effect”). An…

Edited by: Silvia Sacchetti, Carlo Borzaga, Ermanno Tortia This paper considers resource coordination in production systems featuring the presence of enterprises and organizations pursuing social, health-related, educational, cultural, and environmental aims, or social enterprises (SEs). The resource coordination problem is one of allocating and distributing resources towards these…

Il tema della cooperazione fu largamente discusso fra gli economisti del XIX secolo. La ricostruzione di questo dibattito è complessa perché lo stesso concetto di cooperazione subì profonde modificazioni. Inizialmente la parola “cooperazione” fu usata come contrario di “concorrenza”, ritenuta dai socialisti utopisti la causa della povertà dei lavoratori. La…

The paper investigates the conditions under which consumer ownership should be preferred to investor ownership in economies with externalities. On making their choices investor-owners take into account producer surplus only, while consumer-owners take into account both producer and consumer surplus, whereby consumer-owned firms’ objectives are naturally aligned with those of…

In Italia, la tutela del patrimonio culturale è sempre stata demandata principalmente allo Stato o, più in generale, al settore pubblico, soprattutto alla luce della naturale vocazione degli attori pubblici a perseguire interessi generali. Tuttavia, oggigiorno tale “automatismo burocratico” è stato messo in discussione da due macro-trends in atto: da…

Urban regeneration is not simply a process that affects the physical structure of a place, but it also deals with many other aspects, such as the local social structure and the environmental issues. This article focuses its attention on the inner cities and asks questions on their possible redevelopment. In…

In recent times, both researchers and policymakers have identified the need to develop statistics on cooperatives that can be compared at the international level. This need has also been discussed at the 19th International Conference of Labour Statisticians (ICLS) held in Geneva in October 2013, which recognized the importance of…

The belief that cooperatives enjoy high and unjustified tax benefits is widespread among both policy makers and economic operators. And many believe that these are unjustified privileges that cause situations of unfair competition and reduce the contribution of cooperatives to the formation of public revenues. However, these convictions have never…

The agricultural co-operative is one of the most widespread cooperative forms in the world. Nevertheless, in most cases the performance of the agri-food sector is not linked to the contribution assured by this organizational model. In particular, there seems to be no awareness about the strategic role of agricultural co-operatives…

Since the reform of Title V of the Italian Constitution and with the subsequent interventions deriving from the so-called “state property federalism”, local authorities are increasingly required to promote the “maximum functional valorisation” of their real estate assets. The paper analyses the issue of concessions of…

The profit non-distribution constraint (NDC) is the basic requirement for non-profit tax privileges all over the world. In donative non-profits it is justified by the need to prevent donors’ exploitation by firm owners. Donative non-profits, however, are not the only type of third-sector institution and in many of them the…

The governance of cooperative banks is arguably so distinctive that it cannot be properly captured by standard economic models. One of the problems that arises in the assessment of the assumed democratic governance in such banks refers to the members’ commitment to the banks. This paper considers the fact that…

Henry Hansmann has argued that ownership is best allocated to only one group of homogeneous patrons, the group for which the total of cost of governance and contracting is minimized. This paper suggests a different model of governance, which is inclusive of multiple affected patrons, and which is growing especially…

Questo contributo si propone di riformulare lo statuto “critico” del consumo, andando a ricercarne le tracce all’interno di modelli che da alternativi sono diventati mainstream. In particolare si intendono analizzare gli effetti generati da nuove value chains rispetto a un utente/consumatore più consapevole e proattivo. In altre parole: i mercati…

Italian social enterprises are not a new topic in literature. Several aspects e.g. theoretical frameworks, quality of work and job satisfaction, networking strategies, and the impact of the recent financial crisis, have been studied from many different perspectives in the last twenty years. Most of these contributions focus in particular…

When cooperatives were first invented, it was assumed their membership would be limited to one type of user. The Rochdale Pioneers favoured consumers, and employee representation was deliberately limited to a set percentage of board members. Similarly, Schulze Delitsch and Raiffeisen privileged farmers, Buchez workers, insurance mutuals those who are…

Sant’Orsola è una cooperativa agricola situata nella provincia di Trento, un’area del Nord-Est Italia che rappresenta l’1 per cento dell’intero territorio nazionale. In Italia Sant’Orsola è l’azienda leader nel commercio dei piccoli frutti, con una quota di mercato che si aggira attorno al 45 per cento. Questo caso di studio…

The paper describes the characteristics of social cooperatives in Poland, which constitute an important element of the national sector of social entrepreneurship. Social cooperatives are non-profit organizations that combine economic activity with the social and professional reintegration of their members. The paper puts particular emphasis on the presentation of the…

Production governance is not detached from the effects it produces. This paper suggests a framework to assess coordination structures and mechanisms in terms of their ability to include the publics and their interests, and to generate socio-economic value consistently with those interests. To this end, the framework considers a combination…

The new agri-food market scenario is considered a detrimental factor for the competitiveness and financial equilibria of the agricultural cooperatives. According to this vision, as a result of the saturation and globalization process, the shift of the specific investment at the forward level of the supply chain (i.e., for the…

Contemporary literature dealing with the governance of the exploitation of common-pool natural resources was initiated by Elinor Ostrom in 1990, and has been growing fast ever since. On the contrary, within the same research stream, the study of the presence and economic role of common resources in entrepreneurial-organizational is, to…

This work is motivated by the question of how organisational governance can address the needs of vulnerable groups. This paper offers a conceptual reflection on how the production of complex health-related services, such as aspects of preventive psychiatric illnesses, can be governed to the benefit of users and communities society…

“Social enterprise” is an umbrella term that covers a broad range of organisations, which differ to a greater or lesser extent in their visibility, scope and dissemination, in the various countries, but which share the explicit pursuit of social objectives, in the world of business and in an on-going manner,…

During the last years, the regeneration of spaces and buildings inside cities has become an important issue, which involves public governments, private actors and the third sector. The failure of neoliberal market-oriented models, as a tool against social exclusion, has led to the re-thinking of local strategies for urban regeneration.

L’articolo si propone di approfondire alcuni specifici aspetti di governance delle cooperative di lavoro, con particolare riferimento alla partecipazione del socio lavoratore alla gestione dell’impresa. A tal fine si valuteranno i diversi sistemi di amministrazione e controllo di una cooperativa alla luce dell’esigenza di rendere effettiva la partecipazione del socio. L’analisi, tra le altre…

 Le istituzioni non profit rappresentano il settore produttivo che è cresciuto di più nell’ultimo decennio intercensuario (+28 per cento tra il 2001 e il 2011 rispetto al +8,4 per cento delle imprese e al -21,8 per cento delle istituzioni pubbliche), in particolare sono più di 14 mila le istituzioni nate nel 2011, un anno che non…

En este trabajo se describe la evolución de las cooperativas de crédito en Argentina desde finales de 1880 hasta la actualidad. El análisis presta particular atención a la influencia de factores políticos e institucionales. En términos más específicos, muestra cómo reiterados cambios en el marco legal y regulatorio, inducidos por la profunda inestabilidad del contexto político argentino, han afectado sustancialmente la dimensión y la estructura del sistema de cooperativas de crédito.

The macroeconomic impact of banks’ misconduct led users of financial services to be deterred from using the system to the detriment of market integrity and called upon policy makers and supervisors to turn to “culture” as a means to regain public trust and eventually guarantee the stability of the real economy.

Social enterprise lawmaking is a growth industry. In the United States alone, over the last few years, there has been a proliferation of state laws establishing specific legal forms for social enterprises. The situation is not different in Europe, where the process began much earlier than in the United States and today at least fifteen European Union member states have specific laws for social enterprise.

In many countries, the economic crisis has contributed to the increase of already-existing economic and social inequalities.

The phenomenon of ERTs (empresas recuperadas por sus trabajadores) in Argentina has gained popularity since the financial crisis of 2001-2002. The resulting drastic drop in gross national product, the high inflation rates, and the increased rates of unemployment and poverty reflected serious weaknesses and limitations of neoliberal institutions in Argentina.

Partendo dalla missione delle fondazioni di origine bancaria (FOB), frutto delle privatizzazioni delle banche pubbliche italiane avviate nel 1990, si valuta la qualità dell’operato di tali enti, applicando un modello d’analisi che ne considera attività filantropica, attività d’investimento delle risorse derivanti dalla dismissione totale o parziale delle partecipazioni nelle ex banche pubbliche (banche conferitarie), governance e trasparenza.

This paper highlights the first phase of a research program, completed in late 2014 and early 2015, that homes in on worker-recuperated enterprises (imprese recuperate dai lavoratori) in Italy. The paper specifically focuses on Italy’s worker buyouts (WBOs) facilitated by its Legge Marcora (Marcora Law) framework—the form of…

Le cooperative di comunità che si stanno diffondendo in molte parti del mondo sono il punto di arrivo di un processo evolutivo che ha visto il progressivo spostamento del baricentro delle cooperative da particolari gruppi sociali e professionali alla società nel complesso. Questa evoluzione è contrassegnata da due principali eventi.

We discuss the literature on the shift from stakeholder to shareholder finance behind the Great Financial Crisis (GFC). Traditional banks generally maximized stakeholder value (STV). But before the GFC also many of them started maximizing shareholder value (SHV).

The study of multi-stakeholdership (and multi-stakeholder social enterprises in particular) is only at the start. The debate itself is underdeveloped, as the existing understanding of organisations and their aims resist an inclusive, public interest view of enterprise. Our contribution aims at enriching the thin theoretical reflections on multi-stakeholdership, in a context where they are already established, i.e. that of social and personal services.

The concept “social enterprise”, despite being widespread, is still of difficult interpretation. What is certain is that social enterprises bring great benefits to different communities or groups of disadvantaged people by managing economic activities. This paper analyzes the situation of social enterprises in Ireland, being Ireland an example of a country in which social enterprises still do not have a nationally accepted and agreed definition.

Las organizaciones de recicladores de base han sido analizadas en varios contextos como una salida a la informalidad y un antídoto a la pobreza de los que trabajan en este sector. El análisis presentado en este artículo está enfocado en dos estudios de caso en el área metropolitana de Santiago de Chile, donde se han analizado dos comunas en las que trabajan algunas organizaciones de recicladores.

Mancur Olson and Robert Putnam provide two conflicting views on the effect of involvement with voluntary associations on their members. Putnam argues that associations instill in their members habits of cooperation, solidarity and public spiritedness. Olson emphasizes the tendency of groups to pursue private interests and lobby for preferential policies. We carry out the first field experiment involving a sample of members of different association types from different age groups and education levels, as well as a demographically comparable sample of non-members. This enables us to examine the different patterns of behaviour followed by members of Putnam-type and Olson-type associations.

The cooperative movement underwent in 2012 a renewed impulse with the declaration of the “International Year of Cooperatives”. In this paper we present the results of the interviews conducted with international experts of the sector, who belong to national organizations following the Delphi methodology.

In the first part of the paper we study the pricing policies of a customer-owned firm in the absence of external regulation. The profit-sharing rule is a key element of the price choice and our analysis focuses on the two most common ones, uniform and proportional. The main result is that the self-discipline effect generally ensures the dominance of customer-ownership over investor-ownership in welfare terms, though under neither rule it is enough to attain the first-best in equilibrium.

The European social model has always been characterized by the active role played in the production of goods and services by a variety of organizations that differ both from private corporations and public institutions. These are private organizations that, while active on the market, typically pursue goals other than profit: their main purpose is not to generate financial gains for their owners or stakeholders but to provide goods and services either to their members or to the community at large. Traditionally, these organizations have been included in the concept of “social economy”.

Nel panorama europeo e italiano le imprese di comunità si stanno affermando, sotto diverse forme istituzionali, come attore chiave in processi di rigenerazione urbana. Queste organizzazioni, di diversa natura, si distinguono per il ruolo che assumono in ambiti territoriali definiti e, tramite lo svolgimento di diverse attività, mirano allo sviluppo e alla rigenerazione di asset di comunità.

The implementation of projects producing external effects is often a source of disagreement and conflict between hosting and non-hosting communities. The paper focuses on the impact of participatory ownership on conflict resolution and social welfare in the presence of asymmetric information and imperfect quality monitoring.

The paper deals with the mediating role of immaterial satisfaction between substantive organizational substantive features, defined as resources by on-the-job autonomy, involvement, teamwork and workload pressure, and organizational performance, defined in terms of improvements in product quality and innovation. We address this relationship in the Italian social service sector using a survey dataset that includes 4,134 workers and 320 not-for-profit social cooperatives.

Using a stochastic frontier approach, we analyse the imposition of financial sustainability requirement on the traditional social mission of microfinance –outreach to the poor. We also address whether the way ownership is organised and practiced affects the costs of microfinance delivery. Based on a disaggregated 107 sample microfinance providers in Ethiopia, the results suggest that outreach to the poor and achieving financial sustainability (as measured by cost efficiency) are contradictory objectives. Microfinance providers that are closer to the best practicing cost frontier are those with higher average loan sizes and lower proportion of women borrowers. The results also indicate that financial cooperatives are better in cost containment compared to specialised microfinance institutions.

L’effettivo ruolo economico delle cooperative, in generale e a livello settoriale, è spesso sottovalutato e non compreso appieno. Ciò è vero anche per le cooperative operanti nel settore agricolo. Infatti tra i numerosi commenti sulla recente e particolarmente positiva performance del settore agricolo, che ha contribuito a riportare in attivo la bilancia dei pagamenti nazionale, quasi nessuno si è soffermato a valutare il ruolo svolto dalle cooperative e dai consorzi tra produttori agricoli.

The community cooperatives that are spreading today in many parts of the world are the arrival point of an evolutionary process which has seen the progressive shift of cooperatives’ focus from specific social and professional groups to society as a whole.

Building on evidence from the literature, the paper systematises and highlights some of the potential problems in the governance of cooperative firms concerning the accomplishment of cooperative mutualistic aims. In exploring the internal conditions that may affect cooperative performance, we focus in particular on the role of rules and incentives towards such aims.

Social entrepreneurship in Croatia is a rather new phenomenon and is still poorly developed. The paper continues on from the findings of the author’s PhD research and its intention is to provide an understanding of the socio-economic, political and cultural context in which social entrepreneurship emerges, as well as an overview of the current stage of its development in Croatia.

Questo lavoro, basato su un’indagine qualitativa relativa a un campione rappresentativo di 1.000 imprese di micro, piccole e medie dimensioni, ha cercato di individuare il grado di conoscenza degli imprenditori sullo Small Business Act (SBA) e sulle recenti misure di politica industriale, nonché di analizzarne la più recente performance congiunturale e i principali fattori di competitività, sia interni che esterni.

By developing a multiple factor analysis (MFA), this paper aims at deepening the understanding of the economic performance and the employment features of social cooperatives in 2008 (before the crisis) and 2011 (after the beginning of the crisis) in order to better understand how the employment and economic performances of such organisations have changed during the years of the economic crisis. Particular attention will be paid to the analysis of the differences between Italy’s three main geographical areas.

This paper presents the experience of the Work Integration Social Enterprise (WISE) named Manipulados y Servicios Picarral SL. (MAPISER). This social enterprise is focused on employment and social integration for people with physical, sensory, intellectual, and mental illnesses.

The study focused on describing and analysing the integrated approach to agricultural cooperative marketing in Uganda: the tripartite cooperative model. It was found that structural changes and successful growth have been achieved within the agricultural cooperative marketing system.

In places where credit markets are inefficient, attaining financial sustainability while serving the poor depends largely on the ability of lenders to overcome the costs of market contracts and constraints. Such ability of cost containment often varies by lending terms and organizational forms. Using disaggregated data of microfinance providers in Ethiopia, we compared financial cooperatives and specialized or non-bank microfinance institutions on their outreach, financial performance and ability to achieve financial self-sufficiency together with outreach to the poor.

The emergence of the empresas recuperadas por sus trabajadores: A political economic and sociological appraisal of two decades of self-management in Argentina.The aim of this working paper is to provide a political economic and sociological overview of the rise and establishment of ERTs in Argentina over the past two decades. It does so in order to introduce ERTs to readers that might not be familiar with the Argentine experience of workplace conversions to worker cooperatives and their recent historical emergence.

We use a unique dataset to study how participation in two specific types of nonprofit organizations, i.e. social welfare associations and social cooperatives, affects individual social capital. A descriptive analysis shows that both the types of organization have a positive impact.

A short survey of such a vast subject matter cannot be complete. It remains a reasoned but arbitrary collection of ideas, data, facts and figures, biased by the personal experience of the author and his access to sources, inevitably leaving gaps.

The goal of this paper is to apply the theory of commons to residential contexts and verify if and how collective institutions can be used to produce habitability, i.e. a set of particular socio-environmental conditions conducive to inhabiting a particular area. While most literature on the study of the commons has a specific focus on the management of natural resources, this paper argues that collective institutions can work also in urban contexts.

La presente ricerca, condotta con il metodo tradizionale degli indici di bilancio, riguarda le performance economiche e finanziarie ottenute negli anni 2009–2011 da parte di 30 cooperative di lavoro nel settore servizi. Le cooperative indagate sono di dimensioni medie (fatturato 30–50 milioni di euro) e grandi (fatturato superiore a 50 milioni di euro). I risultati ottenuti confermano la tesi che le cooperative presentano una forte capacità di resilienza di fronte alla crisi economica.

Using household survey data from Ethiopia, this paper evaluates the impact of agricultural cooperatives on smallholders’ technical efficiency. We utilize propensity score matching to compare the average difference in technical efficiency between cooperative farmers and similar independent farmers. The approach assumes exogenous cooperative formation and similar farm technology across households.

L’attuale discussione che la crisi ha provocato attorno ai limiti del capitalismo finanziario sta mettendo in discussione questa condizione di minorità dell’economia cooperativa. Il testo tratta di due visioni economiche che si oppongono: quella finanziaria in cui conta solo la crescita del capitale, e quella cooperativa nella quale conta invece la ricerca di un equilibrio tra più dimensioni, incluse quelle sociali e ambientali.

I cambiamenti intervenuti nella regolamentazione e nel mercato bancario hanno inevitabilmente attenuato i caratteri distintivi originari delle banche di credito cooperativo (BCC) e inasprito la concorrenza tra queste e le altre categorie di intermediari creditizi. Questo lavoro cerca, in primo luogo, di misurare l’intensità dei rapporti con i soci che connota le BCC, mettendone in evidenza le differenze a livello territoriale e dimensionale e individuandone le principali determinanti. In secondo luogo, si propone di valutare il ruolo del peer monitoring sulla qualità del credito, verificando empiricamente l’effetto del grado di mutualismo sui principali indicatori di rischiosità.

This paper aims to provide a brief general overview of the present state of European Union (EU) cooperative law from the perspective of harmonization of cooperative law in Europe. It also presents the author’s point of view on the possible future of both EU cooperative law and the harmonization of European national cooperative laws.

This paper discusses the relationship between co-operatives and their communities, one of the standard ways in which the “co-operative difference” is explained. What are the origins of this special relationship? Why and how did it receive so much attention during the 1990s, when the international co-operative movement undertook a large and sustained effort to articulate its basic values and principles? How does the theme of “community responsibility” relate to underlying notions of membership? What kinds of issues are raised when co-operatives seek to address community issues?

The question addressed in this paper is whether the financial structure of cooperatives constitutes a badge of identity that differentiates cooperatives from other corporate legal forms such as capital-based companies. To this end, it examines features of their financial structure that are considered typical of cooperatives in a number of documents published by international organizations.

Il lavoro intende approfondire il “Contratto di rete”, un’innovativa forma di aggregazione tra imprese, recentemente introdotta dal legislatore, attraverso i risultati di un’indagine qualitativa svolta su un campione di circa 300 imprese coinvolte in 159 contratti di rete.

This paper contributes to the literature by carrying out the first empirical investigation into the role of different types of enterprises in the creation of social trust. Drawing on a unique dataset collected through the administration of a questionnaire to a representative sample of the population of the Italian Province of Trento in March 2011, we find that cooperatives are the only type of enterprise where the work environment fosters the social trust of workers.

Tra le varie espressioni dell’innovazione sociale assume un crescente rilievo la rigenerazione di asset comunitari da parte di imprese a finalità sociale. La ristrutturazione di beni immobili e spazi pubblici da destinare a servizi sociali, iniziative culturali, alloggi protetti, turismo comunitario, rappresenta un’importante sfida sia sul piano manageriale che della legittimazione di queste imprese.

Changing framework conditions and a changing environment result in challenges with which the better-off can cope more easily than the poor. In times of rapid change, the individual is often unable to adjust to the requirements of the changed surroundings. Old social and economic structures cease to be effective, old knowledge and skills are devalued. When facing new challenges, learning by experience is ruled out. For the individual, it is difficult to find access to new knowledge, new technologies, additional resources and new markets.

La discussione sui sistemi di governance nelle cooperative è stata ampia, ma non ha prodotto una ricerca di best practices, attraverso codici di governance, paragonabile al caso delle grandi società per azioni. Nel 2008, le cooperative aderenti a Legacoopservizi hanno approvato un codice di governance. Questo studio misura il grado di diffusione del codice dopo 2 anni dalla sua approvazione in 49 cooperative di servizi con un fatturato superiore a 25 milioni di euro. Lo studio si sofferma sulle regole di ammissione dei nuovi soci e sulle modalità di elezione e di composizione del consiglio di amministrazione.

Mondragón Corporación Cooperativa (MCC) è il maggiore gruppo industriale cooperativo del mondo per fatturato. Sorto negli anni Cinquanta, ha intrapreso un singolare percorso di sviluppo basato in un primo momento sulla crescita interna e dimensionale, che ha portato importanti innovazioni nella governance. Queste hanno consentito negli anni Novanta la formazione di un gruppo fortemente internazionalizzato. Le società create all’estero non sono cooperative: ciò ha innescato un intenso dibattito sulla questione se il gruppo avesse perso la propria identità originaria.

Grazie ai successi del modello economico e sociale di questo paese, in Svizzera la riflessione e la prassi dell’economia sociale hanno avuto un certo ritardo rispetto ad altre nazioni. Solo nelle ultime due decadi si assiste alla nascita di forme di impresa sociale o di inserimento lavorativo con caratteristiche affini a quelle delle imprese sociali europee, per iniziativa in particolare di enti ed organizzazioni senza scopo di lucro.

Negli ultimi decenni le nostre società sono state guidate dalla convinzione che solo la grande impresa di capitali meritasse di essere considerata e l’impresa tradizionale (for-profit) si è imposta come il modello d’impresa dominante nel paradigma economico mondiale. Da questo approccio le altre forme di impresa, inclusa quella cooperativa, sono state confinate a svolgere un ruolo del tutto marginale e destinato a scomparire. La realtà oggi, al contrario, sta dimostrando che il pluralismo delle forme di impresa è la strada maestra per affrontare la profonda crisi dell’economia globale, e le cooperative sono parte fondamentale di questo pluralismo.

Over the past few years, there has been a growing interest on the part of the scientific community (and, more recently, of policy makers) in the concept of social innovation. This paper focuses in particular on the usefulness of the concept of social innovation for the purposes of policy development.

This paper describes the role of social cooperatives in Italy as a type of economic, nonprofit organization that is assuming an increasingly central role in the country, by contributing to its economic and social growth.In the last decade many agencies, institutions and research centres (Istat – Italian National Statistic Office, Ministry of Economic Development, Confcooperative Legacoop, Unioncamere) have provided studies on the evolution of the cooperative movement in the Third Sector, in order to monitor the development of these organizations over time and to evaluate their economic and employment impact over the country.

La cooperazione sociale italiana rappresenta un modello unico a livello internazionale sia per l’evoluzione storica, sia per il tipo di risposta che offre anche ai bisogni occupazionali di un determinato territorio. La crisi dei mercati globali ha pesantemente influito sul mercato del lavoro rendendo, da un lato, ancor più difficile la ricollocazione professionale dei soggetti svantaggiati, dall’altro, creando nuove condizioni di fragilità sociale e quindi nuove esigenze lavorative. Pur essendo una via concreta per rispondere a queste emergenze, le cooperative sociali si ritrovano spesso a dover auto-sostenersi in un mercato ad alto tasso concorrenziale, con margini di redditività ridotti e politiche di spesa restrittive.

In this paper, we investigate whether capital structure differs between for-profit and nonprofit sectors by focusing on two key aspects of the latter: the non-distribution constraint and the stakeholder oriented governance system. We develop a theoretical model and show that the former negatively affects leverage, defined as the amount borrowed over the total investment, whilst the latter has a positive effect.

In this paper, we investigate whether capital structure differs between for-profit and nonprofit sectors by focusing on two key aspects of the latter: the non-distribution constraint and the stakeholder oriented governance system. We develop a theoretical model and show that the former negatively affects leverage, defined as the amount borrowed over the total investment, whilst the latter has a positive effect.

The future scenario highlights a Western leadership challenged while the geo-economy seems to be moving back to a pre-Industrial Revolution setup. Against this possible background, we outline various considerations along which that scenario will increase the need for credit cooperatives to shape a more sustainable economy.

La Provincia Autonoma di Trento ha da tempo avviato il processo di riordino delle Aziende Pubbliche di Servizi alla Persona (A.P.S.P.), con l’introduzione di due fondamentali elementi di novità: la possibilità, da parte delle strutture, di estendere i servizi erogati; l’adozione di un modello di aziendalizzazione.

Cooperatives, as both a strategy and an organizational form, often enable under-privileged individuals to collectively compete in a market through joint-ownership agreements and democratic decision-making. While cooperatives are promoted as social enterprises for their labour-centric emphasis, we also know that many fail due to a variety of factors including a lack of accountability, low wages, and difficulty competing in high-end markets.

The Stubai Co-operative, founded in 1897 by several craftsmen and steel manufacturing companies located in the Tyrolean Stubai Valley, has developed in one of the most successful distributors of small steel products in the high quality segment on a global scale. The proposed case study will discuss the reasons for this remarkable success, given that the comparably small Stubai Co-operative is able to challenge big players in the iron manufacturing industry, mainly from the US and the Far East.

Il presente studio intende analizzare il contributo della cooperazione sociale in Italia a livello regionale, evidenziando differenze legate al settore di intervento e all’età di costituzione.

Despite a growing interest in cooperatives, the knowledge of real economic, occupational and social dimensions of the cooperative enterprises is still little and fragmentary, at both a national and an international level.

With the crisis in laissez-faire philosophy and practices, cooperation has rediscovered topical relevance and, at the same time, its diversity. The case of Trentino, an Italian region with an important history of cooperatives, can serve as a way to introduce a reflection on the challenges that we must tackle today. The three “renaissances” of Trentino’s cooperation show the capacity to move beyond repeating traditional solutions and to invent new ones in response to new issues.

This paper presents both a new scientific network named “Study Group on European Cooperative Law” (SGECOL), and the “Principles of European Cooperative Law” (PECOL) project, which SGECOL has identified as its first research activity.

This paper deals with the legal identity of cooperatives. It is divided into three parts. The first part discusses the role and function of law and of comparative legal research on the topic of cooperative identity (sec. 2). The second part focuses on cooperative identity within the International Cooperative Alliance (ICA) Principles and the ICA Statement on the Cooperative Identity at large (sec. 3).

Este documento de trabajo presenta un estudio de caso del Trentino, uno de los territorios europeos con la mayor densidad de empresas cooperativas. El sistema de cooperación desarrollado en esta zona fronteriza a lo largo de sus ciento veinte años de historia ha respondido a una serie de acontecimientos que han cambiado sustancialmente y en repetidas ocasiones el marco institucional y económico, que muestra una gran versatilidad.

El texto trata del renovado interés europeo, dentro del debate político-institucional, para la economía social. En particular se aborda el reconocimiento de la diversidad de formas de empresas después de más de dos décadas en las que, tanto el paradigma económico continental así como las comunes estrategias de desarrollo de la Unión Europea fueron monopolizadas prácticamente por el predominio del modelo de las grandes empresas capitalistas enmarcas dentro del duopolio Estado - mercado.

Nel corso del seminario organizzato da Federsolidarietà/Confcooperative “Co-operare per le scuole del futuro” tenutosi lo scorso settembre 2010 all’interno del festival “Educa”, sono emersi alcuni rilevanti temi di discussione intorno al ruolo delle imprese cooperative nel campo della produzione di servizi educativi. Le sollecitazioni del seminario hanno generato nei promotori – in particolare Federsolidarietà/Confcooperative - la richiesta di un’adeguata sistematizzazione delle conoscenze disponibili attraverso la redazione di un rapporto strutturato in tre parti.

Euricse ha partecipato all’iniziativa “Progetto Donne Lavoro” lanciata dalla rivista Donna Moderna e della Fondazione Vodafone Italia. Il bando di concorso aveva l’obiettivo di premiare l’impresa sociale al femminile offrendo un’opportunità di emancipazione e promozione sociale attraverso il lavoro. Euricse, oltre ad offrire la consulenza tecnica sul tema dell’impresa sociale era anche uno dei membri del comitato scientifico di valutazione.

This paper aims to measure the technical efficiency of agricultural enterprises in Italy during the period 2003 – 2007 by applying a stochastic frontier analysis to panel data. The developed two-sectored model distinguishes between agricultural production function and non-agricultural production function.

The ending of one century and the beginning of another is a ritualistic time for “taking stock”; a time for understanding what has changed and what has largely remained the same; a time to measure what has been accomplished, what has been lost. That is as true for movements as it is for institutions and countries.

This paper provides an outline of both the competitive advantages and challenges currently faced by Italian cooperative credit banks.

This paper aims to fill one knowledge gap on understanding the issue of capital formation in new co-operatives in developing countries. By doing so, it presents the main findings of capital formation and investment in a small sample of horticulture shareholding co-operatives in rural China, because shareholding co-operatives, as one best example of new multi-stakeholder co-operatives in China, have become a vehicle to mobilize additional resources.

Il saggio si propone di studiare la struttura organizzativa, cioè l’integrazione tra imprese sviluppata dalla cooperazione sociale in Italia nel corso dei suoi trent’anni di storia. Per espletare al meglio i propri compiti, infatti, le cooperative sociali si avvalgono del Consorzio, un soggetto imprenditoriale che quasi mai opera nella parte finale della filiera, raramente si colloca sul mercato dei servizi finiti, preferisce stare nel mezzo: per produrre servizi alle imprese.

In this paper recent approaches to the role of social protection systems within economic development policies are discussed. Important experiences are considered, in particular those implemented in medium and low income countries, where new tools for increasing the effectiveness of social and development policies have been tried and tested. Some lessons are also examined that prove useful for defining mechanisms that enhance the quality of services provided by social enterprises in the Italian context.

The paper offers a contribution to the understanding of the relations between incentives, satisfaction and performance of employees in social enterprises. It starts by criticizing the general hypotheses of the principal-agent theory and especially that employee satisfaction is determined exclusively by the level of salary received. These criticisms are explained both by looking to the organizational definition of job satisfaction by Locke and by taking a behavioural economics perspective.

Credit is indubitably one of the most important sectors in which the supply of goods and services by cooperatives has arisen. Given the importance of the role of cooperative banks in the development of other sectors and of the territories or communities in which they operate, and the economic and political power that they consequently confer on those who manage them, some of the inherent problems distinctive in general of not-for-profit organizations become critical.

Partendo dal presupposto che le performance delle Anp dipendono dalla percezione che i vari stakeholder hanno rispetto al raggiungimento della missione, il presente paper analizza il caso dei Centri di Servizio per il Volontariato (CSV).

Il paper propone una stima del ruolo economico del sistema cooperativo in provincia di Trento che tiene conto non solo del contributo diretto alla produzione di reddito, ma anche della produzione e dell’occupazione attivate in imprese diverse da quelle cooperative.

The paper explores the way the work of classic institutionalist authors can inform modern nonprofit economics. From the perspective of Thorstein Veblen, nonprofit organisation is explained as an institutional consequence of the pecuniary-industrial dichotomy. John R. Commons' institutional economics is used to highlight the role of nonprofit organisation in eliminating excessive scarcities of vital goods, thus achieving a more reasonable standard of living in a society.

Le aziende non profit (anp) sono particolari organizzazioni che hanno come obiettivo istituzionale non la creazione di profitto in senso economico ma la massimizzazione del valore sociale prodotto a vantaggio della collettività di riferimento. Tale valore è di natura intangibile e la sua definizione e misurazione dipendono in maniera fondamentale dalla percezione dei diversi stakeholder da esso a vario titolo influenzati.

Euricse’s Working Paper Series consists in a collection of papers that are available for free in electronic format and can be downloaded on Euricse’s website.

We investigate what is behind the profit/not for profit wage differential by comparing judgments on job characteristics of workers who voluntarily or involuntarily moved from the first to the second sector. We define voluntary movers those who applied for a job in a not for profit organization and, when successful, resigned from the for profit one, while involuntary movers can either have been laid off by the company or have resigned without already having a job offer in the not for profit sector when leaving the firm.

Le cooperative di lavoro italiane tendenzialmente accumulano un’elevata quota dei profitti nelle riserve indivisibili, un fondo indisponibile e inappropriabile da parte dei soci. La ricerca indaga le ragioni di questa pratica, dopo aver discusso le interpretazioni più frequentemente utilizzate. L’ipotesi che viene formulata è che le riserve indivisibili giochino un importante ruolo nella tutela della stabilità dell’occupazione nelle cooperative.

The paper examines the main limitations of the orthodox and institutional theories and comes to assert the need for creating and testing a new theoretical framework, which considers the way in which diverse enterprises pursue their goals, the diverse motivations driving actors and organizations, and the different learning patterns and routines within organizations.

This paper presents the principal characteristics of the new Italian co-operative law and seeks to evaluate the relationship of some of its main provisions to traditional co-operative principles. Using the Italian reforms as a starting point for debate, this paper puts forth the possibility of generalising a modified approach to co-operative regulation and principles, taking into account efficiency issues, while preserving the co-operative identity.

The last years have witnessed a wide reshaping of the banking scene. According to researchers and authorities, the aftermath of these developments include an increased risk of demarketing of the conventional banking system towards certain customer segmentations and marginal areas and activities. The present paper argues that this new reality can be thought of as giving new opportunities for financial co-operatives to increase their importance among the market and areas that they historically serve.

The role of cooperative and social enterprises in contemporary market economies has been downplayed and marginalised to date by the dominant economic approaches. This insufficient attention (Kalmi, 2008 su Cambridge Journal of Economics) derives from the limited applicability of the main assumptions of microeconomic to the case of cooperative and social enterprises.