Members' perception of their participation in the governance of cooperatives: the key to trust and commitment in agricultural cooperatives.

TLDR: In this paper, the authors explored to which extent the members' assessment of their cooperatives' degree of success are related to various member attributes, with special reference to the members’ perception of their participation in the governance of the cooperatives.

Abstract: This study explores to which extent the members’ assessment of their cooperatives’ degree of success are related to various member attributes, with special reference to the members’ perception of their participation in the governance of the cooperatives. Three categories of member attributes are identified: Satisfaction with the profitability of farm operations, Age, and Experience from board work. The cooperatives’ degree of success is measured as members’ commitment towards cooperatives, and members’ trust in the board of directors. The data originates from a mail survey among Swedish farmers. A total of 2,250 farmers received a questionnaire. The response rate was 52%. The results indicate differences in members’ cooperative commitment and their trust towards directors to be due to farm operations profitability, age and experience as directors. After adding members’ perception of their participation in the governance as a covariate, most of the other differences are explained by this variable. Age is still to some extent associated with trust towards directors, as older farmers have less trust in directors.