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Exploring the efficiency of Italian social cooperatives by descriptive and principal component analysis

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Abstract

Over the last decade, independent agencies, institutions and research centres (ISTAT—National Statistic Office, Ministry of Economic Development, Confcooperative Legacoop, Unioncamere) have provided studies on the evolution of the cooperative movement in the Third Sector in Italy in order to monitor the development of these organizations over time and to evaluate their economic and employment impact in the country. Following a similar path, this study analyzes the contribution of social cooperatives in Italy at a regional level, highlighting the differences related to their longevity and fields of activity. Moreover, the article evaluates the efficiency and profitability of the social cooperative by adopting principal component analysis to economic and financial indexes.

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Notes

  1. Aida is a data bank created by Bureau Van Dijk (http://www.bvdinfo.com) which stores the registration, commercial and economic information about more than 950,000 Italian businesses.

  2. Currently, Euricse has a complete register of cooperatives in the following regions: Abruzzo, Liguria, Lombardy, Marche, Trentino Alto Adige (register for the provinces of Trento and Bolzano), Piedmont, Emilia–Romagna, Sardinia and the Aosta Valley.

  3. In order to establish the sector of activity, we looked at the ATECO 2007 code concerning the main economic activity declared by the cooperative to the territorial Chamber of Commerce. For more information, see http://www.istat.it/strumenti/definizioni/ateco/.

  4. With only the code of cooperative’s primary activity it is not possible to identify the social cooperatives that perform both activities of types A and B. However, from the analysis of regional registers of social cooperatives and historical data of the phenomenon (only 4.3% were mixed unions in 2005) it is plausible to assume that the number of such cooperatives is still small.

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Acknowledgements

Comments received from colleagues at the 3rd EMES International Research Conference on Social Enterprise (4–7 July 2011, Roskilde, Denmark) and the International Workshop on Accounting for Cooperatives (29–30 September 2011, Valencia, Spain) are gratefully acknowledged. The authors thank the guest editors of this special issue and the anonymous referees for their constructive comments. We would also like to express our appreciation for the financial support received from the Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Trento e Rovereto.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer and Management Sciences, University of Trento and Euricse, Via Inama 5, 38100, Trento, Italy

    Ericka Costa & Michele Andreaus

  2. Euricse – European Research Institute on Cooperative and Social Enterprises (EURICSE), Via S.Giovanni 36, 38122, Trento, Italy

    Chiara Carini

  3. Department of Quantitative Methods, University of Brescia and Euricse, Contrada S. Chiara 50, 25122, Brescia, Italy

    Maurizio Carpita

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  1. Ericka Costa
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  2. Michele Andreaus
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  3. Chiara Carini
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  4. Maurizio Carpita
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Correspondence to Ericka Costa.

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Costa, E., Andreaus, M., Carini, C. et al. Exploring the efficiency of Italian social cooperatives by descriptive and principal component analysis. Serv Bus 6, 117–136 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11628-011-0131-9

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