Organizational design in Estonian agricultural cooperatives

Constantine Iliopoulos, Rando Värnik, Maryline Filippi, Liis Võlli and Kaie Laaneväli-Vinokurov
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Constantine Iliopoulos: IAMO - Leibniz Institute of Agricultural Development in Central and Eastern Europe
Rando Värnik: EMU - Estonian University of Life Sciences
Liis Võlli: EMU - Estonian University of Life Sciences
Kaie Laaneväli-Vinokurov: Ministry of Rural Affairs of the Republic of Estonia

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Abstract: Agricultural cooperatives have been extremely successful at producing and bringing food to billions of consumers around the world. Arguably, such success is caused by their superb ability to constantly adapt to the changing needs of their members and consumers. They do this by slightly modifying (tinkering) or completely altering (reinventing) their organizational design. This issue has not been studied in the context of agricultural cooperatives in former Soviet countries. Given the rising importance of agricultural cooperatives in such countries, however, understanding how cooperative adapt to the evolving preferences of their members and customers becomes of utter importance for both cooperative practitioners and policy makers. The current paper addresses the abovementioned knowledge gap. In particular, it identifies the ownership and governance models adopted by Estonian agricultural cooperatives, and provide key insights into how these organizations adapt to the changing needs of their members, consumers, and their external environment. Estonian agricultural cooperatives exhibit little experimentation with non-traditional ownership and governance models. This is due to the lack of technical expertise in the country, the relatively small size of the country's agricultural cooperatives, and their predominantly defensive strategies. Similarly to other European countries, tinkering is of outmost importance for Estonian agricultural cooperatives.

Keywords: Estonia; Ownership; Governance; Agricultural cooperative Estonia Ownership Governance; Agricultural cooperative (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019-12
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Published in Journal of Co-operative Organization and Management, 2019, 7 (2), pp.100093. ⟨10.1016/j.jcom.2019.100093⟩

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:hal-04010102

DOI: 10.1016/j.jcom.2019.100093

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