Keywords

1 Introduction

This chapter explores this diverse landscape of cooperatives in Switzerland today through quantitative and qualitative lenses. While this chapter’s aim is primarily to give a broad overview of the cooperative landscape today rather than to advance any specific argument, a few noteworthy points will crystalize by its end. First, the landscape of Swiss cooperatives is diverse: cooperatives come in all sizes and are involved in most sections of the Swiss economy. They differ in the extent to which they engage with the market, to how they balance economic with social goals, and to how palpable their cooperative identity is. There is, in short, no “typical” Swiss cooperative. Second, despite a series of scandals involving larger well-known cooperatives, the available evidence suggest that cooperatives continue to enjoy a favorable standing among much of the Swiss population. Finally, while there is a rich tradition among some commentators, both in Switzerland and abroad, of questioning cooperatives’ viability in the new, dynamic, and disruptive business environment of the twenty-first century, there are ample success stories of Swiss cooperatives adapting, surviving, and even thriving.

As explored in the Introduction, cooperatives are a prevalent organizational form in Switzerland. Moreover, compared to neighboring countries, Swiss cooperatives stand out for their high degree of “corporatization.” In some sectors, such as retail, they dominate the market. Migros, for example, is the largest retailer in Switzerland, with CHF 28.93 billion in revenue in 2021, over 97,000 employees, and over 2 million members (Migros Group, 2022; Statista, 2021). Moreover, their streamlined branding and operations make them all but indistinguishable from corporations to the average consumer. To an uninitiated customer, the interior of a Migros differs little from comparable, upscale joint or privately owned grocery stores in neighboring countries (Nicholls & Huybrechts, 2017, p. 473). When asked about the organizational form of Mobiliar, a prominent cooperative insurance provider in Switzerland, 34% of respondents in a survey in 2016 believed it to be a corporation (with only 37% correctly identifying it as a cooperative) (Jungmeister et al., 2016, p. 206).

At the same time, the landscape of cooperatives in Switzerland is diverse. Along with Migros and other cooperatives of national reach, there are smaller, less corporate-like, and often less market-oriented cooperatives across the country—from cities to remote Alpine valleys—that play an important role in advancing social and economic aims. Housing cooperatives, for example, play an increasingly prominent role in urban areas, where affordable housing is an increasing social concern. For example, the Wohnbaukommission in Zurich, Switzerland’s largest city, is a non-profit cooperative founded in 1956 that provides 3800 rooms across 68 properties for the city’s university students (Wohnbaukommission, 2022). Similarly, in a remote valley of the Bernese Alps, the Ecole d’Humanité, a small boarding school organized along the principles of the reform education movement, is also a registered cooperative (Lembke-Ibold, 2010). Numerous farming communities in the same region and across Switzerland use cooperatives to organize grazing on common Alpine pastures and bring their dairy products to market (Stuber et al., 2018).

In the first section, we attempt to sketch an overview of cooperatives in Switzerland today. First, relying on economic data, we try to establish a comprehensive overview of the absolute numbers and distribution of cooperatives along geographic groupings, economic activity, and size and economic impact. Using surveys and secondary sources, this section further explores public perception of cooperatives and discusses recent media resonance. The second section aims to move beyond this broad overview to examine on a more granular level how various cooperatives are coping with a challenging and changing economic landscape. This includes a discussion of how large and established cooperatives are evolving, using the case of REKA as an example, and an examination of how smaller cooperatives are surviving, adapting, and, in some cases, thriving in new, socially critical areas: farming, housing, and energy. Finally, the conclusion summarizes key findings and tries to take stock of cooperatives in Switzerland today and what the future may hold. Before beginning with the chapter’s proper sections, however, the remainder of this Introduction briefly outlines the definition of cooperatives used in this chapter and elaborates on the sources on which it is based.

Robert Purtschert, one of the preeminent scholars of corporatism in Switzerland, has pointed out that while in some countries, cooperatives that have an explicit market orientation are regarded as “atypical,” such cooperatives are an accepted and prevalent form in Switzerland (2007, p. 384). For this reason, in categorizing cooperatives in Switzerland, Purtschert recommends thinking in four clusters (2007, pp. 384–386):

  1. 1.

    Market-oriented cooperatives

  2. 2.

    Self-help cooperatives

  3. 3.

    Social-political cooperatives

  4. 4.

    Public special purpose cooperatives and associations

These clusters speak to the broad integration of cooperatives at different levels and for other purposes of Swiss society.

At the time of this chapter’s writing, there were 8312 entities registered as cooperatives in the Swiss Federal Commercial Registry (ZEFIX, 2022). This includes cooperatives within all four of Purtschert’s clusters. This number has been declining year on year—in 2020 there were 8559 cooperatives (Idée Coopérative, 2020a, p. 10).

While the Commercial Registry allows for a quick and easy overview of total registered cooperatives, it does not classify entries according to the General Classification of Economic Activities (NOGA) sectors and activity areas. For this reason, we have used the STATENT dataset from 2018 as the primary basis for our overview of cooperatives in Switzerland. STATENT is a dataset of organizational structures (Statistik der Unternehmensstruktur) in Switzerland compiled by the Swiss Federal Office of Statistics, based on raw data from the registers of the Old-age and Survivors' Insurance (AHV). The database provides basic indicators of the structures of the Swiss economy including the number of enterprises, business locales, and employees.Footnote 1 As such, working with the STATENT dataset offers a researcher a more granular view of cooperative types and distribution. In our analysis, we focused on entities that were legally registered as cooperatives and were market-oriented and private enterprises—in other words, the first of Purtschert’s clusters.Footnote 2

Where appropriate, the numbers generated by our own statistical analysis are compared and contrasted to the figures cited by Idée Coopéerative and IG Genossenschaften in their recent reports.

In addition to our data analysis of ZEFIX and STATENT datasets, this chapter is based on three types of sources: academic literature, reports from industry associations, and newspaper articles. With a few recent exceptions—in the area of sustainability and energy—it is rare for international, English-language studies to examine cooperatives in Switzerland or to engage in comparative studies with Switzerland as a case. This can likely be attributed to Switzerland’s small size and to the fact that Swiss scholars, past and present, writing on cooperatives do so overwhelmingly in German. Swiss academic literature on cooperatives, in turn, is limited in size and most of it can be attributed to one of two clusters: Robert Purtschert’s now emeritus group at the University of Fribourg—with an emphasis on non-profit management—and a group centered on the University of Lucerne’s Institut für Wirtschaft und Regulierung—with an emphasis on legal aspects and governance. This group, too has largely seized to operate. It is, however, notable in an international comparison, as few countries have established cooperative law studies (Cracogna et al., 2013, p. 804).

Switzerland has a number of cooperative advocacy groups, with one particularly prominent: Idée Cooperative (known until 2019 as IGG). Its “Cooperatives Monitor” [“Genossenschaftsmonitor”], published most recently in 2020, is based on an extensive survey conducted by a policy research firm into a variety of dimensions of cooperatives in Switzerland today. As such, it presents one of the most comprehensive studies into cooperatives today and forms one key resource in this chapter. Similarly, a study conducted in 2016, under the name IG Genossenschaften, forms another pillar of this chapter. This study is based on interviews with 1013 randomly selected Swiss (IG Genossenschaften, 2016).

Finally, the authors conducted a search for coverage of cooperatives in the online repositories of several Swiss German-language newspapers (NZZ, Republik, Finanz und Wirtschaft, Bilanz, SwissInfo / SRF, and Luzerner Zeitung).Footnote 3 The content analysis was unstructured, serving to gain a general overview of the types of themes associated with cooperatives that are reported.

2 Cooperatives in Switzerland: Numbers and Distribution

2.1 Geographic Distribution

Cooperatives are present in all regions of Switzerland. We analyzed distribution along three geographic criteria: established economic regions, Cantons, and language regions. Seen by a number of entities (count value), the highest concentration is in the so-called “Espace Mittelland” with 26%. This is followed by 19% in Eastern Switzerland and 16% in the Greater Zurich Area (see Fig. 2.1). Tessin has the lowest percentage of cooperatives at 2%.

Fig. 2.1
A piechart of the distribution of cooperatives in Switzerland. The values of Lake Geneva area, Space Mittelland, northwest Switzerland, Zurich, eastern Switzerland, central Switzerland, and Ticino are 12%, 26%, 13%, 16%, 19%, 12%, and 2%, respectively.

Geographic distribution of cooperatives in Switzerland (STATENT)

Full size image

Ranked by Cantons, Bern has the highest number of cooperatives with 553, followed by Zurich (503) and Lucerne (272). This proportion is similar when using the larger Commercial Registry dataset, which lists 1416 in Bern, 1122 in Zurich, and 572 in Lucerne (ZEFIX, 2022). Appenzell Innerrhoden ranks last with seven cooperatives, based on the STATENT data. However, ranked by cooperatives per capita, Grissons, Uri, and Basel City, in that order, rank at the top (see Fig. 2.2). Notably is the fact that Bern, Lucerne, Grissons, and Thurgau rank in the top third both by absolute and per capita cooperatives.

Fig. 2.2
A bar graph of cooperatives per Canton plots values from 0 to 600 versus cooperatives. It follows a decreasing trend that starts with the highest value of 553 for B E, followed by 503 for Z H, and ends with the lowest value of 7 for A I. Values are estimated.

Cooperatives per Canton (STATENT)

Full size image

In the distribution along language regions, 82% are located in German-speaking areas, 14.7% in French-speaking areas, 2.2% in Italian-speaking areas, and 1.1% in Romansch-speaking areas. This distribution is not proportionate to the percentage of the population speaking the four languages. For comparative purposes, according to the Federal Office of Statistics, in 2020 62.3% of Swiss residents spoke German, 22.8% spoke French, 8% spoke Italian, and 0.5% Romansch (with the remaining speaking a different language) (Bundesamt für Statistik, 2022).

We also analyzed the cooperative distribution along population density categories. Fifty-three percent of Swiss cooperatives are based in urban areas, with 25% in semi-urban or rural population centers and 22% in rural areas. Given Switzerland’s small size combined with its efficient transportation infrastructure, these numbers cannot be used to infer preferences among cooperatives, members, or customers based on an urban–rural demographics. According to the Federal Office of Statistics, the average Swiss worker commutes 29 min each way (Bundesamt für Statistik, 2019). While farming cooperatives in remoter valleys may serve an exclusively rural population, many of the cooperatives in rural and semi-urban areas will be intimately integrated into surrounding urban areas, in terms of their employees, customers, and suppliers.

2.2 Distribution by Economic Activities

Another perspective on cooperative distribution is by economic activity. According to the three-sector model, as defined by the Swiss General Classification of Economic Activities (NOGA), cooperatives are overwhelmingly active in the tertiary sector (83%), followed by the secondary (13%) and primary (1%).

Below the sector level, the Swiss General Classification of Economic Activities (NOGA) defines 21 sections (A–U),Footnote 4 aligned with the European Union economic activities classification system. Cooperatives in Switzerland are principally active in 17 of these. Three of these sections account for nearly half of all Swiss cooperatives: “Real Estate, Renting and Related Activities,” “Wholesale and Retail Trade, Repair of Motor Vehicles and Consumer Durables,” and “Financial Intermediation, Insurance (excluding compulsory social security)” (see Fig. 2.3) The remaining three sections that have a count value of higher than 100 are “Other Services” (302), “Manufacturing industries/production of goods” (172), “Power supply” (126), and “Health and social services” (103) (see Fig. 2.3).

Fig. 2.3
A horizontal bar graph of the number of Swiss cooperatives. It follows a decreasing trend that starts with the highest value of 1065 for real estate activities, followed by 441 for financial and insurance activities, and ends with the lowest value of 34 for agriculture, forestry, and fishing.

Number of Swiss cooperatives by economic activity (STATENT)

Full size image

The count value of cooperatives in specific sections is, of course, not the same as financial volume. Ranked by revenue, the ten largest cooperatives in Switzerland (in 2019) were (Idée Coopérative, 2020a, p. 5):

  1. 1.

    Coop

  2. 2.

    Migros Group

  3. 3.

    Fenaco

  4. 4.

    Schweizer Mobiliar

  5. 5.

    Raiffeisen Schweiz

  6. 6.

    Pensionskasse Energie

  7. 7.

    Pax Holding

  8. 8.

    Schweizer Reisekasse (Reka)

  9. 9.

    Swisslos

  10. 10.

    ESA

Of these, four are in “Wholesale and Retail Trade, Repair of Motor Vehicles and Consumer Durables” (Coop, Migros Group, Fenaco, and ESA) and another four in “Financial Intermediation, Insurance” (Schweizer Mobiliar, Raiffeisen Schweiz, Pensionskasse Energie, and Pax Holding). Only one, Schweizer Reisekasse, is in the section of “Real Estate, Renting and Related Activities,” despite the fact that the count value for this section is 1065 or nearly a third of all Swiss cooperatives. Moreover, REKA is active in tourism and short-term rental and therefore, functionally, none of the ten largest Swiss cooperatives are involved in primary housing. This speaks to the fact that cooperatives have emerged as a well-suited vehicle for implementing small-scale participatory housing development and rental projects in major Swiss cities (more on this below). There is a large number of small such cooperatives, in terms of financial volume and membership, spread out across the major Swiss cities. Similarly, “Power supply” is a growing area of cooperative involvement, but as of yet largely on a small scale, often municipal level. The mechanisms that drive this development in the housing and energy sections will be discussed below (see Sect. 2.3.2).

2.3 Economic Impact and Employment

According to a study by Idée Coopéerative, cooperatives make a disproportionate contribution to the GNP. The largest 20 cooperatives alone account for 15% of GNP (Idée Coopérative, 2020a, p. 10). This analysis is limited to the largest cooperatives; a comprehensive examination of the economic contribution of all Swiss cooperatives would be needed to definitely define its contribution vis-à-vis other organizations. Put differently, without an analysis of the financial data of all cooperatives, it is unclear how robust the extrapolation of the ten largest cooperates is. This is especially so since among these ten are Swiss market leaders such as Coop and Migros in retail and ESA in automobile and parts purchasing.

Cooperatives in Switzerland come in large and small sizes. This is true of financial volume as well as of employment numbers. Our analysis of the STATENT dataset revealed 713 cooperatives with one employee (and 1211 when counting full-time equivalent rather than persons) and a further 401 cooperatives with only 2 employees. Overall, roughly 70% of Swiss cooperatives (2221) employ fewer than 10 employees. Around 25% employ 10–49 employees (761) and 6% (190) employ between 50 and 250 people. Only 1% employ between 250 and 449 (17) and even fewer employ 500 and more.

Our analysis of the STATENT dataset identified a total of 150,047 cooperative employees in Switzerland. An examination of the annual reports of some of the largest cooperatives suggest that this figure is an underrepresentation when taking all cooperatives into account. In employees (not FTE), the Migros Group reported 97,727 employees in 2022 (Migros Group, 2022), the Coop 95,826 in 2023 (Coop, 2023), Raiffeisen Schweiz 11,652 in 2022 (Raiffeisen, 2022), and Mobiliar 6226 in 2022 (Mobiliar, 2022).

While the size of the enterprise by revenue and employees is correlated in the retail section, as seen in the case of Migros and Coop, such a relationship does not carry across all cooperatives. Swisslos, for example, which in 2022 had a revenue of 490 million has only 195 employees (Swisslos, 2022). This is a result of Swisslos objective as the organizer of the German-speaking Cantons’ lottery system, which requires no retail staff.

In summary, one can state that the Swiss cooperative landscape is composed of a small number of large cooperatives, with thousands of employees and making a substantial impact on the economy, and, on the other end of the spectrum, a high number of mid to small cooperatives.

2.4 The Social Impact of Swiss Cooperatives

Swiss cooperatives are very active in addressing societal challenges and to create social impact (please see the paragraph about numbers and distribution above). To address societal problems and the measurement of impact of activities in this context, social impact measurement has become important also for Swiss cooperatives (Ebrahim & Rangan, 2014; Nicholls, 2009), also due to changing legislative requirements in reporting that cooperatives must do. The topics of the social impact evaluation debate can be clustered around the nature of social impact (Choi & Majumdar, 2014), the relationship between social enterprises’ interventions and social impact (Ebrahim & Rangan, 2014) as well as the methodologies to assess social impact (Nicholls, 2009).

While many organizations know quite well how to assess financial performance, there are only a few generally agreed-upon methodologies for social impact measurement (Kroeger & Weber, 2014; Nicholls, 2009). Numerous, competing key topics and methodologies for social impact measurement exist; each with its own strengths, weaknesses, and purposes (McLoughlin et al., 2009). The Swiss cooperatives are often responsible toward multiple stakeholders, so it becomes clear that the impact assessment challenge might be even more critical than it is for for-profit firms. Cooperatives have the pressure to show a portfolio of measures to assess their impact from both a business and societal viewpoint (Molecke & Pinkse, 2017). Ambiguity around social impact and its measurement can lead to frictions within and among various stakeholders involved (Molecke & Pinkse, 2017), though recent legislative developments related to the “social” sector in various countries have led to increased attention dedicated to developing formal measurements of social impact. Such formal methodologies aim to create evidence-based measures that capture the social impact of cooperatives.

A rich landscape of methods for the measurement of social impact is developing. Yet, the lack of accepted conventions challenges the accountability to multiple stakeholders and for multiple purposes. While the ambiguity in social impact measurement is well known (Ebrahim & Rangan, 2014; Emerson, 2003; Kroeger & Weber, 2014; Nicholls, 2009), less understood is how cooperatives and social enterprises deal with it to address the demands of their multiple stakeholders (Molecke & Pinkse, 2017). Clear is, that Swiss cooperatives tackle social and sustainable challenges by applying different methods for their assessment at least to such an extent that impact is ensured.

2.5 Perception and Media Resonance

A question that concerns researchers in the broader, international cooperative studies literature is the extent to which working for a cooperative is or is perceived as different from working for other organizations. Some international studies have demonstrated a clear link between job satisfaction and employee health in cooperatives that have a prominent social mission, including in France, Spain, and India (Castel et al., 2011; Umesh, 2019; Ollé-Espluga & Xavier, 2019), as well as globally (Pérotin, 2017). There is, as of yet, no such scientific study in the Swiss case.

Nevertheless, there is anecdotal evidence to suggest that cooperatives are progressive and popular employers. The STATENT dataset does not indicate the gender, age, health, or job satisfaction of employees. Various newspaper articles, however, have highlighted the popularity of cooperatives and other socially and environmentally responsible employers among younger workers (Kofler, 2013). Idée Coopérative’s survey in 2020, too, revealed 40.3% of leadership positions in mid-sized cooperatives to be held by women. This, the study’s authors note, compares to 19% of all non-listed Swiss enterprises (Idée Coopérative, 2020a, p. 19). The same report notes that the cooperatives surveyed are a popular employer to younger generations of Swiss. Another survey by Idée Coopéerative in 2021 came to a similar conclusion and emphasized that cooperatives were particularly popular among Gen Z and Y employers (Amstutz & Scherer, 2021).

Further studies are needed to gain a comprehensive overview of perceived benefits of working for a cooperative vis-à-vis other organizations, and potential differences in these perceived benefits among different types of cooperatives.

Anecdotal evidence suggests, however, that coupled with the popularity of working for socially oriented cooperatives, the large prominent cooperatives that operate in ways similar to large corporations appeal to employees no differently from the comparable corporations. Coop, for example, makes regular appearances in newspaper articles that chronicle unfair work practices (Egg, 2020; Bernatta, 2022), as we will see below.

The public perception—that is beyond those who work for a specific cooperative—of cooperatives in Switzerland is largely positive. In fact, various commentators regularly portray cooperatives as an organizational form intimately linked to Swiss culture and political traditions (see Chap. 5). An empirical study survey data from 2011 to 2016 revealed a generally positive image of cooperatives in the public imagination. Eighty-one percent of respondents in 2011 and 88% in 2016 placed a high or complete trust in cooperatives, compared to only 32% and 56% in corporations (Jungmeister et al., 2016, p. 210).

While the trust in cooperatives enjoys a certain stability, cooperatives are profiting from shifting perceptions of economic growth among the population as well. A variety of quantitative and qualitative studies have demonstrated that the Swiss population is growing increasingly weary of growth as a business goal (Kneubühler, 2016). In a study based on survey data from 2016, the authors report that only 34% of Swiss respondents look favorably on economic growth, in general, while 58% prefer the economy to remain at its present level (IG Genossenschaften, 2016). This mistrust of growth and a growth motive among corporations does not spill over to cooperatives. The authors of an article on the subject of cooperative perceptions in Switzerland write, “Cooperatives enjoy in comparison to corporations a small growth bonus in the eyes of [Swiss] population, which is, however, revoked when cooperatives behave too much like corporations, in particular when market mechanism and structures with negative societal consequences are established” (Jungmeister et al., 2016, p. 207).

Despite the strong public perception of cooperatives, they have not been spared negative press in the past decade. A series of scandals, such as those affecting Migros, Coop, and Raiffeisen, were prominent talking points in Swiss media. Often these have revolved around strong personalities—a case in point being the Raiffeisen scandal. Raiffeisen is the third-largest bank in Switzerland and is a cooperative made up of 200 local branches. Between 1999 and 2015, the bank’s CEO Pierin Vincenz sought to overhaul the banking cooperative through the acquisition of other businesses and an emphasis on digitalization. Vincenz was described by one news source as, “Flamboyant, eager to engage with the media and known for bold strategic gambles, Vincenz was the antithesis of a discreet Swiss banker” (Allen, 2022). He stands accused, along with a few other former employees, of embezzlement, fraud, and bribery (2020). While Raiffeisen is not charged, the Swiss regulator FINMA noted serious flaws in its governance in a 2018 investigation (2018).

Occasionally more critical analysts have laid the blame not on the strong personalities at the helm, but directly on cooperatives as an organizational form. Thus, for example, the NZZ reported in the wake of the Migros scandal in 2021 that “cooperatives are, according to experts, more prone to abuse of power because misbehavior is less visible” (Gratwohl & Müller, 2021). Others claim that cooperatives are not per se an inappropriate organizational form, only so in the case of large institutions, such as national banks (2018).

Despite these critical voices, there is no scientifically robust study to suggest that cooperatives in Switzerland are in fact more prone to mismanagement or abuse of power. Moreover, the scandals at the large, well-known cooperatives have led to an overhaul of governance structures, including, for example, at Migros in response to the Piller scandal. These include new mechanisms for oversight and sanctioning, as well as term limits for board members (Gratwohl & Müller, 2021). Moreover, cooperative scholars and associations have recently pushed best-practice guidelines for cooperative governance. This includes Idée Coopéerative’s formulated best practices for cooperative corporate governance in 2021, corresponding to Swiss Code of Best Practice for listed companies (Brechbühl et al., 2021) and Franco Taisch’s Genossenschaftsunternehmen. Ein Leitpfaden (2012).

3 Swiss Cooperatives in Changing Times

3.1 The Established Cooperatives

One critical research area is the ability of cooperatives to respond to evolving pressures. While some scholars have noted that Swiss cooperatives on the whole stand out for their adaption of traditional, corporate management processes and structures (Kalogeraki et al., 2018), this obviously does not hold true across the board. In fact, as one scholar notes, those cooperatives that failed to make such transitions in the post-war period often went out of business (Ekberg, 2012).

The fact that well-known Swiss cooperatives, including the retail giants Migros and Coop, as well as financial service institutions, such as Mobiliar, operate in ways indistinguishable from comparably sized corporations, can, on the one hand, be read as a sign of resilience and staying power. One such cooperative, that has evolved with time but can look back on a long history is the REKA.

REKA was founded with a strong social mission: to enable and facilitate travel for the working classes. As such, it was part of larger Swiss and European social movements around the turn of the century. Often summed up in the German-speaking countries as the Lebensreform, this social movement saw advocacy on behalf of nature experiences, a reform of education, healthy eating, and the experience of nature (Locher, 2021). The movement’s advocates professed an idealized form of relating to nation and nature that, at times, blended the ideological imperatives of the right and left (Gutmann, 2016). In Switzerland, the last decade of the nineteenth century and the first decade of the 20th witnessed a broad effort to make travel and domestic tourism available to the broad Swiss public. The Swiss Alpine Club, founded in 1863 initially as a vehicle for the well-to-do classes to exchange information on Alpine peaks, but by 1900 keen to attract the working classes to mountain tourism as well, the Naturfreunde group of Zurich, tourism began to gain traction across the population. In 1935, Migros founder Gottlied Duttweiler founded a travel agency, the Hotelplan, and 4 years later REKA was founded.

REKA operated primarily by REKA Marken, since 1966 known as REKA Checks, which are a credit system for families to purchase cheap vacations. By 1976, REKA sold checks to a value of above CHF 100 million (in 2000 hit the 400 million mark and 500 3 years later) (REKA, 2022). REKA Checks, or REKA money as it is now known, allows REKA to attain its social mission because it offers discounts on bookings; in 2021 REKA calculates that these discounts amounted to CHF 103 million (REKA, 2020, p. 26). To further its mission, it launched a foundation to collect funds for travel for socially vulnerable families in 1989. Today, REKA operates several vacation rentals across Switzerland and neighboring countries—including 13 vacation “villages”—for a total of 1787 rental units. Its operating income in 2021 was 78 million Swiss Francs (REKA, 2020). Like other Swiss large cooperatives, a professionalization in management and market dominance, broadening to reach beyond its initially intended audience, while still serving its original purpose.

3.2 The Small Cooperatives: Farming, Housing, and Electricity

As we saw above, agriculture, energy, and housing are three economic activity areas in which cooperatives are, at least numerically, well represented in Switzerland. This is interesting because especially the latter two are domains of significant social concern in which the federal government has and is increasingly withdrawing through a process of liberalization. This has left municipalities to contend with housing and energy, especially renewable energy, shortfalls. Cooperatives have emerged as a particularly well-suited vehicle for municipalities to accomplish this work.

Smaller cooperatives, that serve niche communities or focus more on social goals, are under more pressure than the large, established cooperatives. Often, however, this has to do with the economic sector itself—farming is a tenuous occupation in Switzerland regardless of how one is organized. As such, cooperatives are also emerging—or re-emering—as vehicles to address critical vulnerabilities in Swiss society. Farming being a case in point.

Farming is deeply rooted in Swiss culture and national identity and was deliberately molded with tourism in the post-World War II period (Lindemann-Matthies, 2010). Since a reform in the mid-1990s, Swiss agricultural policies aim at a multifunctional sustainability, with government support targeting both rural economic wellbeing, food output, conservation, and environmental sustainability (Mann and Lanz 2013). At the same time, the reforms of the 1990s removed some forms of farming subsidies, leading some to speak of a “partial withdrawal of the state” (Bardsley & Bardsley, 2014, p. 12). Additionally, Swiss farmers are hampered by the fact that the Alpine landscape is topographically and climactically more challenging to farm than traditional farming scapes in Germany, France, Denmark, and other European countries. As such, farming cooperatives have regained their importance as one vehicle through which, in the words of a group of authors, meet “the needs of rural communities within a liberalizing economy” (Bardsley & Bardsley, 2014).

These facts have led to a revitalization of traditional Alpine cooperatives, as a way of pooling resources and leveraging size and administrative support. One such example is the Gran Alpine cooperative in the Canton of Graubünden. The object of Bardsley and Bardsley’s 2014 study, this cooperative is composed of 442 farmers from 9 Alpine valleys in the Canton of Grabünden. Flour from the farmers is collected and milled at one mill, and pasta is produced at two locations and hops are brewed (Gran Alpine, 2022).

In Alpine dairy cooperatives, cows in private ownership are brought together in the summer to graze collectively on high-alpine pastures organized by the local municipality or cooperatives. At the end of the summer period, the most prized output from this collective effort, cheese, was divided among the cooperative members in a ritualized festival known in the Berner Oberland as the Chästeilet. For example, the Chaesteilet Jististal dates back to 1739 (Stuber et al., 2018, p. 2). However, today the tradition has become anchored in local tourism initiatives.

A 2014 study that examined how cooperatively organized mountain farming communities in the Canton of Grissons finds that they are adapting successfully to the challenges of farming in an ecologically challenging environment. In particular, the authors note, the cooperative structure allows the farmers to mitigate risks “to farmers’ production, values and local identities” (Bardsley & Bardsley, 2014). A 2017 study of Swiss dairy cooperatives, too, came to similar conclusions (Forney & Häberli, 2017).

Such studies of a Swiss focus are important globally as well because, as Jasper Grashuis points out, “Farmer cooperatives have been portrayed in the literature as flawed and complex organizations with ambiguous objectives,” despite the scarcity of robust research on this very point. Emerging studies in Switzerland, such as the ones cited above support Grashuis’s contention that many agricultural cooperatives achieve, “survival and longevity by means of strategic adaptation” (2018).

Building on works that highlight the success of cooperatives in involving citizens in the entire development process of new living spaces and that demonstrate such projects’ market success (Arnold & Barth, 2012; Bayulken & Huisingh, 2015), a 2015 study examined the development of an eco-development in Switzerland. They found that, “cooperatives represent an ideal playground for involving citizens in promoting urban sustainable processes” and that the concrete project they studied, the Hunziker Areal, “led to a changing perception of the innovative potential of citizens” (Purtik et al., 2016, p. 122).

The success of cooperatives in responding to increased pressures on the housing market in Switzerland is more complex. With a creeping trend to liberalization in past decades, traditional mechanisms for ensuring housing for lower-income residents, such as public housing or demand-side subsidies, are less able to find support across a broad base of the political spectrum. In Switzerland, cooperatives have emerged as an ideal vehicle to maintain access to housing stock among the lower and middle classes, especially in the expensive urban centers. A study based on data from five large Swiss cities by Balmer and Gerber shows that, paradoxically, housing cooperatives are “the only measure that can gain a political majority within the local context are those supporting private non-profit housing, such as cooperatives in a non-monetary manner, because only competing profit-seeking investors might be adversely affected” (Balmer & Gerber, 2017, p. 367). Moreover, the authors found that cooperatives are more cost-effective than more direct government interventions (Balmer & Gerber, 2017, p. 378).

Another area in which emerging research suggests cooperatives may be particularly well suited is in diversifying and decentralizing energy production. Schmid, Meister, Klagge, and Seidl propose in a 2019 study that energy cooperatives in Switzerland and Germany are well suited to facilitate citizen political and economic participation in renewable energy production and to link this participation to municipal and other governmental levels (Schmid et al., 2019). Based on a quantitative analysis of survey data, a 2020 study by the same authors suggests that municipalities were more likely to support cooperative energy providers if the municipality was a member. Such support most often took the form of facilitating or providing space for solar panels on roofs (46%), “fast processing of approval procedures (41%) and “purchasing energy at cost-covering prices” (26%) (Meister et al., 2020, p. 10). Furthermore, the authors predict that such support will become increasingly important as they observe a trend of reduced national support for renewable energy (Meister et al., 2020).

Despite widespread municipal support, smaller energy cooperatives that emphasize renewable energy struggle with unfavorable market conditions. Large-scale studies, most recently one by the Swiss Federal Institute for Snow and Avalanche Research (WSL) found that despite widespread public support for and engagement with energy cooperatives, it was difficult for them to compete with traditional energy providers (Rivas et al., 2018). In a summary of another study, the authors note that “energy cooperatives are being squeezed: it is very difficult to sell electricity with ecological added value at a price that covers the cost of production. In the past, more than half of the cooperatives cited this difficulty as an obstacle to growth. Looking to the future, even more respondents are expecting to see their growth restricted by sales difficulties” (Projects n.d.).

In farming, housing, and energy, then, cooperatives are a strong vehicle for promoting a widespread public good from which the state is increasingly retreating. While they have been reasonably successful at doing so, conditions remain challenging.

4 Conclusion

While there are no comprehensive surveys of the perception of cooperatives globally, several scholars suggest that cooperatives have an undeserved reputation as “small-sized, undercapitalized, and […] short-lived” (Carini & Carpita, 2017, p. 261). In nuanced examinations of cooperatives in specific regions or countries, however, the same scholars find widespread evidence to refute this perception (Iliopoulos & Valentinov, 2018). Switzerland, as we have seen, certainly bears out this point. Cooperatives in Switzerland have a long and rich tradition in a wide variety of economic activity areas. Moreover, today there are healthy cooperatives with long traditions that dominate or play a substantial role within their markets: Migros and Coop in retail, Raiffeisen in banking, and Mobiliar in insurance, to name but a few.

There is, of course, no doubt that many smaller cooperatives are under pressure. One result of this is the merging of smaller cooperatives into larger ones. This phenomenon, visible in Switzerland, is widespread; In a German study, reasons included competitiveness and viability, with some smaller cooperatives either financially unable or due to organizational reasons not able to survive alone. Expectations of modern management, for example, of controlling and liquidity planning are tough for small cooperatives to handle (Fandrich et al., 2005, p. 11). In Switzerland, the absolute number of cooperatives has declined from 3445 in 2011 to 3212, based on our STATENT analysis. A positive trend can nonetheless be inferred. Nadja Fabrizio notes in a 2022 study that only 0.3% of new companies formed in Switzerland today are cooperatives (Fabrizio, 2022). However, in 2019 there were 14% more cooperatives founded than in the previous year (Idée Coopérative, 2020b), and again in 2020, there were 6% more than in 2019 (Idée Coopérative, 2021).

The launch of a mentoring program for cooperative start-ups in 2018 (Ticker, 2018) and other advocacy and support efforts, such as Idée Coopéerative, will only further the attractiveness of cooperatives in new ventures that target emerging challenges in Switzerland. Idée Coopéerative too was launched in part to support the cooperative ecosystem in Switzerland by representing cooperatives, organizing exchanges and information sessions, and by engaging in a broader dialogue with society on the topic (Eichenberger, 2020).

While cooperatives seem well positioned to play a growing role in emerging topics such as energy and housing, certain hurdles remain to founding cooperatives in the Swiss context. Fabrizio cites several reasons for this low number: the need for at least seven members and other legal requirements, the fact that cooperatives are not naturally associated with entrepreneurship and that there is a lack of information among potential founders and advisers on the potential and particularities of cooperatives (Fabrizio, p. 4).

The framework conditions for new and existing cooperatives could also be optimized. It is, as of yet, not legally possible to join a cooperative online (Köpfli & Perret, 2016). This and other legal and structural changes are currently being discussed (for more see Chap. 3).

Despite such obstacles, the authors believe, as this chapter has shown, that the cooperative ecosystem in Switzerland remains vibrant and relevant. Beyond the established, market-leading cooperatives in retail and insurance, there are ample of smaller cooperatives that, despite their challenges, are making a critical impact in their chosen areas of work. It is our hope, and belief, that this will continue to be true for the foreseeable future.