and organizational theory, we use co-operatives to explore social expectations and institutional arrangements around form at the societal, population, and organizational levels using a population ecology framework. We develop a research agenda based on propositions that address specific features of identity formation in less typical forms of organization, including tensions with normative business expectations, engagement with identity audiences, embeddedness in networks and alliances, structural factors influencing identity, and identity ambiguity.3

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This article contributes to understanding the role and position of worker cooperatives in society, providing a socio-political explanation to their existence as well as conceptual tools that can be used to imagine and implement economic democracy practices. It uses and complexifies Habermas’s social theory and its separation between system and lifeworld to show that cooperatives may act, intentionally and idealistically, at the interface of these two domains. This positioning enables cooperatives to participate in resisting colonization of the lifeworld by endowing individuals with resources favouring communicative action and by redefining institutional arrangements within the system. This article identifies factors explaining the varying degrees of resistance to colonization by cooperatives. It also contributes to theorizing the potential effects of organizing work in an economically democratic way.

How are identities of alternative forms of organization constructed and how does this process differ relative to normative forms socially expected? In this research we consider identity formation in cooperatives , a population of organizations allied globally through values and practices such as democratic participation, voluntary and open membership, and limited return to capital investment. As an extension of current thinking on identity formation in entrepreneurship and organizational theory, we use cooperatives to explore social expectations and institutional arrangements around form at the societal, population, and organizational levels using a population ecology framework. We develop a research agenda based on propositions that address specific features of identity formation in less typical forms of organization, including tensions with normative business expectations, engagement with identity audiences, embeddedness in networks and alliances, structural factors influencing identity, and identity ambiguity.

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