文档介绍：Influence Activities in Agricultural Cooperatives: The Impact
of Heterogenity
By
Geir Gripsrud, Gaute Homb Lenvik and Nina Veflen Olsen
Center for Research on Cooperatives, Norwegian School of Management
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Paper submitted to ”The Food Sector in Transition – Nordic Research”, June 14-15,
2000. Oslo, Norway.
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1. Introduction
Organizational economics seeks to analyze the most efficient way anize different
types of economic activities. In the agricultural sector, a substantial part of both purchases
of inputs and marketing of finished products are carried out by cooperatives, that is,
organizations owned by the farmers who are buying/selling products. The cooperative
represents a particular type of vertical integration, with a large number of principals and
their elected, as well as hired, agents. The anizational form is important
in many countries and has played a crucial role in promoting the interests of the farmers.
The role of agricultural cooperatives in the EU is documented in van Bekkum and van
Dijk (1997).
In a number of countries, the cooperatives are now adapting to a changing environment
by implementing anizational measures. Mergers may take place to exploit
economies of scale further, but the traditional cooperative model is also being challenged
by new types of cooperatives. In some cases the cooperative may end up as an ordinary
investor owned firm, but different types of entrepreneurial cooperative models are also
available (Nilsson, 1999). Transaction cost analysis has been used to explain the
transformation of traditional cooperatives (Harte, 1997). Conventional transaction cost
analysis is focusing on the factors that may cause market failure, and argue that in such
cases a hierachical type of governance structure may be more efficient. A vertical
integration of transactions between adjacent stages in the value chain examplifies this,
and one way of