2012 | OriginalPaper | Chapter
Institutional Analysis and Collective Mobilization in a Comparative Assessment of Two Cooperatives in India
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Cooperatives as a form of economic organization represent one of the main alternatives to shareholder-based capitalism. There are over 1 billion members of cooperatives worldwide, and they employ more than 100 million women and men – 20 per cent more than multinational enterprises (International Cooperative Alliance, ICA, 2011). The ICA (2011) defines a cooperative as ‘an autonomous association of persons united voluntarily to meet their common economic, social, and cultural needs and aspirations through a jointly-owned and democratically-controlled enterprise’. The United Nations estimated in 1994 that the livelihood of nearly 3 billion people was supported by cooperative enterprise, underlining their significant economic and social roles in their communities. It is a testimony to their economic and social significance that the International Labour Organization has declared 2012 to be the International Year of Cooperatives.