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It has been shown that, in a context of economic crisis, cooperatives remain more resilient and flexible than other forms of entrepreneurship. The current study investigates the possible explanations for the varying dimension of cooperatives sector in different countries. To this end, focusing on the institutional environment, this work introduces a variable not commonly found in studies on entrepreneurial activity, political activism. We present an empirical analysis based on a structural equation model (SEM-PLS) applied to a database on 52 countries. The model leads us to draw the conclusion that there exists a direct and indirect relationship between political activism and the size of cooperative sector.

Over the last few decades, the social and solidarity economy (SSE) has undergone complex changes, from being undervalued to being institutionalized as a key sector in the economy. Within this context of change, Ecuador is a remarkable example of a country that has revamped its public policy to situate the SSE in a position of prominence on the national landscape. Using the business cycle theory and based on a model of panel data from 2007&ndash, 2017, this article attempts to empirically validate that the relationship between the size of Ecuadorian cooperatives, as core businesses of SSE, is coupled with the expansive and destructive economic cycles by adding two more variables: business structure and public policy. From a global perspective, the results confirm a procyclical of the behavior of cooperatives and the positive impact of the new public policy. However, the sectoral and territorial analysis concludes that only production cooperatives in the primary sector have grown in the new institutional framework, and that this growth is concentrated in provinces with a strong cooperative tradition.

The increase in the weight of social entrepreneurship (SE) in the economy has driven the increase in research on the subject. Within the set of approaches developed by scholars to analyse SE, the institutional approach has recently acquired greater relevance. Following this research trend, this article seeks to expand the empirical research on SE by focusing on the informal factors that are less studied in the literature and using a cross-national base. Using the New Institutional Economics and partial least squares&ndash, structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM), our findings show the influence of cultural context on the SE dimension. In addition, this influence occurs through two groups of variables led by social capital and corporate social responsibility, although their impacts show opposite signs. These factors have important implications for policy makers in charge of fostering SE development.

This article presents an empirical analysis of determinants of the survival of firm or self-employed workers in the Spanish translation sector. In the midst of a global downturn, the survival of firm and self-employed workers is a key factor for the progress of the economy and for a better and more stable future. The analysis explores the combination of variables including human capital, contingency and economic investment that potentially drive translation and interpreting firms to survive. The study performs a comparative qualitative analysis using a fs/QCA methodology and identify seven combinations of causes that lead to the outcome. The results show that different causal paths predict the survival of those translation and interpreting firms or self-employed entrepreneurs. With little literature on the topic of firm survival in the translation sector, the research aims to fill that gap and make a valuable contribution to the current literature.

Millennials represent the most important group among the working age population. Destined to be the leaders of the future, their professional and personal profiles differ considerably from previous generations. Despite being considered as the most successful generation, millennials face a societal transformation and a labor reality marked by high levels of unemployment and underemployment that shape their career choice. Although millennials&rsquo, and university students&rsquo, job preferences have long been debated in the literature, some research gaps remain. Studies rarely consider the interplay between individuals&rsquo, profiles and the institutional form of business, particularly cooperative versus non cooperative options. To predict the compatibility between Millennials&rsquo, profiles and the cooperative job preference, a multinomial logit model is developed based on a survey of millennial business college students. Our key findings showed that some extrinsic issues are related to cooperative job preference, however the factor that has the most significant impact is the cooperative knowledge. This has important implications for the cooperative movement and for policy makers in charge of cooperative development.

After the crash of financial institutions and the negative effects of the financial crisis, financial service cooperatives (FSCs) emerged as good performer compared to commercial banks. But this condition will not be enough to face the challenges that the new financial panorama will bring on the banking arena. Among them, challenges related to the corporate social responsibility (CSR) sphere will play a special role. In Canada, the financial regulatory framework forces some federal institutions to publish information on social responsibility. Although FSCs are not forced to disclose information they need to provide CSR information to show their role as an institution capable of innovating in sustainable matters. This work analyses public communications of Canadian FSCs to determine the degree of inclusion of CSR information requested from financial institutions. Results show that the CSR Canadian legal framework has a reduced impact on FSCs communication practices, although with significant differences among them.

Resume Le secteur financier, tout comme les autres secteurs, est marque par les changements lies a la mondialisation. Paradoxalement, alors que le secteur financier se caracterise par son dynamisme et sa capacite d’innovation, le niveau de rentabilite exige dans un contexte fortement concurrentiel compromet l’accessibilite aux services financiers pour une partie de la population dont les activites n’apparaissent pas suffisamment rentables. Ainsi, la lutte pour contrer l’exclusion financiere devient un enjeu important de la responsabilite sociale des institutions. Mais cette problematique est loin d’etre nouvelle, car, historiquement, les citoyens, les consommateurs et les entrepreneurs qui n’avaient pas acces aux services bancaires ont participe au developpement des cooperatives de services financiers pour pouvoir en obtenir. Cet article vise a contribuer au debat sur la responsabilite sociale des institutions du systeme bancaire canadien qui œuvrent dans differents cadres reglementaires et sous differentes formes organisationnelles. Un survol des pratiques des plus grandes institutions financieres (banques commerciales et cooperatives de services financiers) permettra de mettre en lumiere les strategies de reddition de compte de leurs activites socialement responsables.

Integrating economic, social and environmental dimensions into business dynamics from the stakeholders’ point of view is becoming increasingly important as a strategic business value shared by European institutions. However, corporate social responsibility (CSR) is not a challenge for all economic organizations; for cooperatives, CSR represents an integral part of their values and the dynamics with which they operate. In the particular case of financial service cooperatives, this type of company makes it possible to prevent banking exclusion, which still exists in developed countries. This article aims, primarily, to analyze the concept of CSR from the point of view of cooperatives by studying the characteristics of social responsibility reports as instruments of measurement and communication of their behaviour in this aspect. This preliminary phase allows us to then conduct a comparative study of the social, economic and environmental results of 134 cooperative and non-cooperative financial institutions worldwide.

The mass savings and loans sector plays a fundamental role in the Mexican micro-finance field. Its complexity and lack of information prove to be its main characteristics, due to the multitude of legal statutes existing, the absence of official records and obligatory controls, and its continual informal growth and fragmented geographic nature. This paper tries to offer an image of the state of popular savings and loans in Mexico prior to the transformation currently underway, due to be implemented in the next two years according to the stipulations of new regulations passed for the sector. The profile presented is focused on the financial area, without losing its links with micro-finance and its relation to the co-operative movement, based on data provided by representative co-operatives and/or state supervisory and promotion bodies. Lastly, we take a brief look at the main aspects and implications of the process of remodelling underway.

The survival of the economic organizations in the present environment demands a very fast power of reaction to operate in a market increasingly big and competitive. The famous globalisation is leading to a modification in the internal structures of enterprises, having a tendency to increase its flexibility to face the new circumstances. Different organizational and financial factors have been introduced in the present legal framework of the co-operative societies with the aim to facilitate its adaptation to the new economical environment. But these tools encourage some speculative behaviour instead of preverving the identity and boosting the effective binding of the members to the actual financial and organical structure. In the light of the new general and regional Spanish legislation, the present paper compares the different distortions of the democratic principle derived from the modifications introduced in the social structure of the co-operative society as well as the participation of certain external creditors in the process of decisions-making.

At the door of the XXI century, the Agenda 2000 and the agreements reached at the European Council of Berlin opened the possibility for a new design of European policies. The three fundamental aspects discussed were: the reformulation of Structures Policy, the reformulation of Common Agrarian Policy, and the necessary adjustments for the adaptation to the entrance of new members into the European Union, creating for it a specific financial framework for the period 2000-2006. This work shows the evolution and the perspective of the structural financial instruments from the reformation with the objective to achieve greater effectiveness, as well as the necessary assumption of competences and functions on the part of the members States. On the other hand, it discusses the change tendency that implies to fit agriculture inside a wider socio-economic framework. Indeed, the agrarian sector must not be approached in an isolated manner but rather as an economic activity with an important weight in the development of the different European regions, that have to be favoured to attain territorial balance and economic and social cohesion; which implies the fortification of the rural policy to secure this balance as a fundamental pillar of the Common Agrarian Policy. At this context, co-operative businesses play a crucial role as agents involved in the processes of territorial development, not only due to their dynamics as economic actors but also for their contribution to economic and social cohesion.

There has been a considerable increase in studies dealing with women’s entrepreneurship and with collective entrepreneurship, respectively. However, studies focusing on women’s collective entrepreneurship are far from understanding the conceptualization of the relationship between collective entrepreneurship and women. To help fill this void, the authors use the essay method. In the first part, they begin by identifying the two transformative perspectives at the foundation of women’s collective entrepreneurship, that is to say self-management and feminism, which both converge and differ. They then present concrete manifestations illustrating the building of new economic and gender-based social relations, through examples of social innovations at the organizational level. In the second part, they discuss the strategic positioning of the transformative perspectives in public policies, as it is from these perspectives that the movements develop their strategic capability to mobilize resources, such as those of the State.

Las zonas rurales enfrentan un conjunto de desafíos globales como resultado de las actuales transformacioneseconómicas y sociales. La contribución de las cooperativas, en tanto que empresas de estructura colectiva conuna fuerte adscripción territorial, ha originado que sean consideradas en algunos países como un pilar de laspolíticas rurales. Este trabajo analiza una exitosa iniciativa pública de casi treinta años: las cooperativas dedesarrollo regional. Su función como promotoras del movimiento cooperativo de Quebec es fundamentalpara la diversidad empresarial y el empleo de las regiones rurales.

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) can be conceived as a construct that embraces different ideas, conceptions and relations between firms and society. This role as interface allows CSR to act as a business driver to transfer cultural values from the macro-level and transform them into part of corporate culture in the micro-level. Considering this integrative theoretical framework, relationships among development, changing values, CSR, innovation, and internationalisation are analysed. An empirical study using a Structural Equation Model (SEM) of Partial Least Square (PLS) technique, based on data from 32 countries, has been made. The results show that when society’s values shift to post-materialism, firms that integrate CSR in their corporate culture obtain a source of knowledge creation that encourages firms’ innovation and internationalisation.