Common cropland management as a social innovation in agri-food cooperatives

PIÑEIRO; V.; MARTINEZ-GOMEZ, VICTOR; MELIA-MARTÍ, ELENA; GARCIA-ALVAREZ-COQUE, JOSE-MARIA

Viena

Congreso; 37th EGOS Colloquium; 2021

European Group of Organizational Studies

This research attempts to identify internal conditions that enable collective management of members' cropland in agri-food coops. Socio-economic coops' characteristics such as size, innovative orientation, governance, and collaboration with other cooperatives are hypothesized as potential drivers for joint cropland management, understood as a form of collective entrepreneurship. Conditions that lead to joint land management are identified by applying fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) to a sample of 35 agri-food cooperatives in Mediterranean Spain. Our findings indicate two possible alternative or complementary patterns of cooperatives' characteristics that explain cropland joint management initiatives.