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Governance Implications from a Re-Hybridizing Agricultural Co-Operative

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Managing Hybrid Organizations

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Abstract

Co-operatives are constitutional hybrids where the hybridity is laid down in structural components such as rules and regulations and is visible in ownership arrangements and organizational mission. We seek to advance the current scholarly debate on organizational governance by applying a structural and processual analytical framework on empirical data consisting of interviews with members and elected officials in a sizeable Swedish forestry co-operative.

We argue that market imperatives of economies of scale in the agricultural industry have led to increasingly larger farms and also to increasingly larger and more centralized agricultural businesses. This has in turn diminished the number of members which are to govern the businesses in these co-operatives, and also increased the size and complexity of the governance task. We will thus argue that this development indicates an ongoing re-balancing of the hybrid character of the co-operative studied, with clear governance implications.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    See Einarsson (2012b) for a similarly scattered picture of the constitutionalhybridity design in a selection of other types of large membership-based federations.

  2. 2.

    Our interviews ranged from 90 to 150 minutes and were transcribed and analyzed thematically with the help of NVivo software.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Management & Organization, Stockholm School of Economics, Stockholm, Sweden

    Stefan Einarsson & Filip Wijkström

Authors
  1. Stefan Einarsson
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  2. Filip Wijkström
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Stefan Einarsson .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Score, Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden

    Susanna Alexius  & Staffan Furusten  & 

  2. Stockholm School of Economics, Stockholm, Sweden

    Susanna Alexius  & Staffan Furusten  & 

Appendix: Interviews

Appendix: Interviews

Name

Title

Organization

Date

Lars-Erik Åström

National chair

Södra

2011-02-07

Leif Brodén

CEO

Södra

2007-09-03

Magnus Berg

Member director

Södra

2007-08-27, 2011-02-01, 2013-06-12

Ingvar Karlsson

Former member director

Södra

2010-12-28

Ingemar Svanström

Member

Södra

2010-03-16

Leif Jonsson

Member

Södra

2010-03-17

Leif Slöjdmark

Member

Södra

2009-12-11

Norma Slöjdmark

Member

Södra

2009-12-11

Åke Carlson

Regional chair

Södra

2013-05-21

Albin Gunnarsson

Regional chair

Södra

2013-06-10

Camilla Logarn

Regional chair

Södra

2013-06-19

Magnus Persson

Regional chair

Södra

2013-06-14

Gunnar Thorn-Andersen

Regional chair

Södra

2013-06-14

Mats Löfgren

Regional chair

Södra

2013-06-19

Siw Abrahamsson

Regional chair

Södra

2013-06-10

Tomas Andersson

Regional chair

Södra

2013-06-10

Zeth Bergström

Regional chair

Södra

2013-06-14

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Einarsson, S., Wijkström, F. (2019). Governance Implications from a Re-Hybridizing Agricultural Co-Operative. In: Alexius, S., Furusten, S. (eds) Managing Hybrid Organizations. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-95486-8_11

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