Members' commitment affecting agri-food cooperatives' capitalisation: Effects on innovation and performance.

There is a wide consensus that capitalisation is one major prerequisite for cooperative’s success (Fulton, 1999; Zeuli and Betancor, 2005; Österberg and Nilsson, 2009). In order to acquire the required capital to implement these growth-related strategies and remain competitive, agricultural cooperatives need to encourage their members to participate on equity raisings. As commented by Chaddad et al. (2005), it has been suggested that financial constraints are the ‛Achilles’ heel’ of cooperatives in an increasingly concentrated, tightly coordinated and capital-intensive food system (Vitaliano, 1983; Cook, 1995). Investments in R&D in Italian cooperatives are usually an insignificant part of the strategies adopted by agri-food cooperatives; this is also common in the majority of non-cooperative, agri-food firms (Bono, 2012). In this regard, the objective of this work is to analyse how members’ commitment can explain the capitalisation of the cooperative and therefore its innovation capacities and performance. Data from 50 agrifood cooperatives from Emilia-Romagna were obtained. Data has been gathered with a web survey sent by e-mail and telephone follow-up contacting was deemed. Results show how the level of members’ commitment can explain the capitalisation of the cooperatives, and this is also positively related with innovation and performance of the cooperative.