The internal government of the largest Spanish agri-food cooperatives and their relationship with performance

Abstract

The present study aims to analyze the relationship between the governance structures of the largest Spanish agri-food cooperatives and their business results, in order to verify - if, as has been shown in recent studies on European agri-food cooperatives - cooperatives showing greater innovation In their governance structures (in aspects such as the professionalization of management, inclusion of proportional voting or presence of external experts in the Boards of Directors or Supervisors), present better results than the cooperatives that do not possess these attributes. The results obtained corroborate that the performance (measured in turnover per member) of the Spanish agri-food cooperatives analyzed is positively affected by the introduction of some innovations in their internal governance systems, such as the inclusion of external experts in the Council Rector and Supervisory Board. In addition, the study yields other conclusions related to the size or size of the cooperative, and it is found that larger cooperatives (measured in this case by the volume of assets) are able to provide a greater and significant yield; As opposed to the number of partners whose effect on performance is significant and negative.