Book Review

Industrial Organization,

Membership: an Organizational View

This study examines the membership structure of a large centralized cooperative from an organizational workability view. Structure is created by dividing membership organizationally, i.e., assigning different roles and tasks to different groups of members, as well as to individual members, and bringing coordination to these differentiations. The membership structure of the case cooperative was found large in number of members, highly differentiated, and well coordinated. The structuring, i.e., creating a division of labor among the membership, and the coordinating of these divisions is done in response to conditions in the membership environment.Cooperative, organization, paradigm, specialization, coordination, complexity, stability/instability, Agribusiness,

Young Member Programs for Cooperatives

The overall objective of this study is to provide cooperative decision makers with effective strategies for developing young member programs in local cooperatives. To accomplish this, the study sets out to determine: (1) the range and scope of young member programs and activities utilized by a sample of local cooperatives, (2) the relationship of young member programs and activities to the legislative system of local cooperatives, (3) the factors that block integration of young member programs and activities into local cooperatives and (4) the organizing procedures that help stimulate the development of young member programs and activities.Cooperative, young member, education, program, participation, Agribusiness,

Toward an Organizational Theory of Membership Structural Design

Various events have led to the development of highly complex cooperative operations and to concepts for understanding operations. However. development of membership structures and concepts for understanding these structures has lagged. This paper imports organizational design and contingency theory into the member control literature. Membership structure is understood as organization-like, producing a service (Le., member control). Member control structure is understood as having three aspects (representation, policy making, and oversight) and two environments (the members themselves, and management and operations). Building from cooperative principles and following the development of cooperatives from simple to complex organizations, this paper develops a series of axiomatic propositions for understanding and designing membership structure. Only some of the propositions are testable, and still others are meant only to give continuity and relevance to the propositions as a group (as a theory). Such work should help develop a language for understanding and furthering discussion and research of membership structure and member control in agricultural cooperatives.Agribusiness,

Charting from within a Grounded Concept of Member Control

Organizational charts of membership structures can be useful tools for monitoring member control when they accurately depict a concept of control grounded in context and theory. This paper develops the concept "member control" by placing it within cooperative principles and democratic theory. From this perspective, members control their organization when, through a democratic process of decision making, they are able to keep the cooperative a cooperative, a condition we call "containment." With this conceptual development, a containment method of member control charting is developed and illustrative examples given.Agribusiness,

Evolution of Cooperative Thought, Theory, and Purpose

The evolution of agricultural cooperative thought, theory, and purpose in the United States is reviewed from the standpoint of the reemergence of interest in how cooperatives can provide some of the security and benefits that might be lost with gradual phasing out of federal government farm support programs. By accomplishing group action for self-help, the early development of cooperatives drew considerable attention from economists, social theorists, and politicians. Alternative schools of cooperative thought developed, but most proponents of cooperatives regarded them as having enormous potential to provide a public service role in building a more economically stable and democratic society This paper also surveys how cooperative theory was developed more rigorously in the post-WWII period. It has provided better analytical tools for understanding how and why cooperatives have changed in response to technological and economic developments, as well as to social trends, like individualism. Given the new perspectives on cooperative theory and the scope of changes in how cooperatives operate and are structured, cooperatives have even greater potential for coordinating self-help actions, but this potential needs the support of cooperative education services.Agribusiness,

Evaluating the Pecan and Sweet Potato Pilot Insurance Programs: A Case Study in the Application of Utilization-Focused Client-Based Methodology

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the application of qualitative evaluation techniques to generate information for decision making in a field setting. To achieve this goal, the paper presents a brief review of the epistemology of the qualitative technique of participatory action research and use focused evaluation. This is followed by an analysis of the results of the evaluation of the Pecan and Sweet Potato Pilot Insurance Programs to demonstrate the application of these qualitative techniques to generate information for decision making in a complex social milieu. The results of this case-study demonstrate the utility of qualitative techniques to produce credible and reliable information to decision makers

Farmer Cooperatives: Commercial Farmer Members and Use

Seventy-eight percent of commercial farmers were either members or nonmember patrons of marketing/farm supply cooperatives in 1986 compared with more than 76 percent in 1980. From 1980 to 1986, the percentage of commercial farmers who were members of cooperatives increased from 65 to 66 percent. Nonmember patrons held steady at 12 percent. The biggest change was an increase in percent of members among commercial farmers with sales of $500,000 and over. Members among this group increased from 56 percent in 1980 to 69 percent in 1986. The percentage of commercial farmers with multiple memberships increased and the percentage of farmers with inactive memberships decreased. The percentage using cooperatives for marketing and for purchasing increased. Forty-nine percent used a cooperative for marketing, and 71 percent used a cooperative to purchase farm supplies in 1986. Data for the study were obtained from surveys by the National Agricultural Statistics Service (formerly Statistical Reporting Service), U.S. Department of Agriculture.Farmer cooperatives, marketing cooperatives, farm supply cooperatives, cooperative members, commercial farmer, Agribusiness,

PQChPT with Staggered Sea and Valence Ginsparg-Wilson Quarks: Vector Meson Masses

We consider partially quenched, mixed chiral perturbation theory with staggered sea and Ginsparg-Wilson valence quarks in order to extract a chiral-continuum extrapolation expression for the vector meson mass up to order O(a^2), at one-loop level. Based on general principles, we accomplish the task without explicitly constructing a sophisticated, heavy vector meson chiral Lagrangian.Comment: 12 pages, 1 figure, REVTe