Overcoming the legacy of the past? Analyzing the modes of governance used by the Polish agricultural producer groups

Volker Beckmann, Ilona M. Otto and Rong Tan
Additional contact information
Volker Beckmann: Faculty of Law and Economics, Ernst-Moritz-Arndt-University Greifswald, Greifswald, Germany
Ilona M. Otto: School of Public Affairs, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China
Rong Tan: School of Public Affairs, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China

Agricultural Economics, 2015, vol. 61, issue 5, 222-233

Abstract: The cooperative movement in Poland has a long but difficult history, which has caused farmers to have an aversion to cooperatives. Nonetheless, in the early 1990s, the first farmers' cooperative marketing organizations, which were called agricultural producer groups, appeared in the market. These groups are bottom-up, voluntary organizations the primary purpose of which is to jointly sell their members' output. In this paper, it is investigated why the new forms of governance, namely cooperative arrangements, were chosen, and we evaluate the implications of these choices on the market success of these groups. Empirical data were collected from 62 producer groups in one Polish province. We found that the groups were typically functioning as associations, unions, and limited liability companies. The factors that had an impact on the choices made were the number of members and the specific investment per member. Additionally, if the initial investment level was low, not only set-up and operational costs but also tax considerations played a role in the decision. Therefore, we argue that the new bottom-up cooperatives, which are theoretically suitable when the start-up capital is high or the number of members is large, will gradually be recognized and accepted in the market despite the fact that these cooperatives have a "bad reputation" caused by the socialist legacy. The new cooperative development trend confirms this argument.

Keywords: co-operatives; governance; organizational choice; Poland; socialist legacy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://agricecon.agriculturejournals.cz/doi/10.17221/190/2014-AGRICECON.html (text/html)
http://agricecon.agriculturejournals.cz/doi/10.17221/190/2014-AGRICECON.pdf (application/pdf)
free of charge

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:caa:jnlage:v:61:y:2015:i:5:id:190-2014-agricecon

DOI: 10.17221/190/2014-AGRICECON

Access Statistics for this article

Agricultural Economics is currently edited by Ing. Zdeňka Náglová, Ph.D.

More articles in Agricultural Economics from Czech Academy of Agricultural Sciences
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Ivo Andrle ().