The Decisive Factors of Cooperatives’ Future – Their Nature, Longevity, Role, and Environment

In conclusion, in looking at the second half of the twentieth century, it emerges that environment, or even better culture and legislation, have shaped cooperative undertakings in many ways. The extreme example is the invention of state-centric cooperatives in command economies, but even in countries in which co-ops generally continued to follow the ICA principles, legislation has played a crucial role because, in some cases, it has helped co-ops to avoid perverse incentives, while in others it has encouraged them to become similar to IOBs. One can say that, like IOBs, cooperative undertakings need a coherent set of rules to be institutionally and economically viable. This “Conclusion” has shown that the three issues dealt with in this volume – the special nature of co-ops, their longevity as a species, and the impact of the environment on them – are interdependent: the species will not survive if the special nature of co-ops becomes seriously undermined. The contributions in this volume, however, indicate that this has not happened and is unlikely to happen in the future. This special kind of business will doubtless continue to evolve and to maintain an important position in a rapidly changing world economy.