A new co-operative revolution in South Africa? Reflections on the outcomes of state support in the Free State Province

Abstract

There has been growing interest in the role and potential which cooperatives can play in terms of economic and community development in the Global South as alternatives to more conventional models of business organisation. One country which has been particularly proactive in this regard is South Africa, where cooperatives feature prominently in national and provincial level development strategies and support. This paper overviews key themes in the literature before proceeding to a case study of the effectiveness of state support for cooperatives in the Free State Province of South Africa. Findings show that the well-intentioned objectives of state interventions are not being realised due to poor business planning, lack of training, poor market links and the seeming prioritisation of political over economic considerations.

The Role of Social Capital in the Management of Payakabung Village Enterprises in South Sumatera Province

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A typology of social entrepreneuring models in South Africa

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“…Meanwhile, scholars have also considered the role of policy in alternative enterprise in development contexts, but this work is also primarily focused on questions of interest in development studies, and is less clearly tied to organizational studies. Wessels and Nel (2016) examine how policy support of these enterprises in South Africa can be consonant with the goals of a developmental state. But state support, which is often quite robust and top‐down in nature, as in Rwanda (Harrison, 2016), can sometimes be counterproductive, forcing entrepreneurs to join cooperatives when more informal institutional models have been shown to better achieve development goals such as poverty reduction (Mann & Berry, 2016).…”