DO LABOUR SOCIETIES PERFORM DIFFERENTLY TO COOPERATIVES? EVIDENCE FROM THE SPANISH BUILDING INDUSTRY.

ABSTRACT: Labour Societies and Cooperatives are both Social Economy enterprises, but with noticeable differences, some of which are imposed by legislation in Spain. The aim of this paper is to study whether such differences affect their management capacity and, in particular, efficiency. In doing so, Data Envelopment Analysis techniques and the metafrontier approach proposed by O'Donnell et al. (2008) are used on a sample of Spanish Labour Societies and Cooperatives belonging to the building industry. Scores of technical efficiency and metafrontier ratios are computed at firm level and, as a novel contribution to existing literature in this field of research, at input-specific level. The main finding shows that Cooperatives enjoy some technological advantages over Labour Societies, particularly in regard to the management of labour, fixed assets and current assets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]