Analysing the links between cooperative principles,entrepreneurial orientation and performance

Abstract

Cooperatives are enterprises characterised bycertain principles, such as cooperation, democratic de-cision-making, and training that define their entrepre-neurial behaviours. Several of these cooperative princi-ples appear to exert a positive influence on the perfor-mance of these firms and on the three dimensions thatdefine the entrepreneurial orientation of companies:proactiveness, innovativeness, and risk-taking. Thisstudy builds a theoretical model that relates cooperativeprinciples, entrepreneurial orientation, and performancefrom the perspective of corporate governance and hu-man resource management practices, in order to studythe links that may exist between these elements. Usingdata from a survey on 155 worker cooperatives in theBasque Country (Spain) and applying the partial leastsquares technique, we find that cooperative principlespositively affect the performance of cooperatives, bothdirectly and via entrepreneurial orientation.