Solidarity economy cooperatives: The impact of governance and gender on member income

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to identify the most effective governance configurations, including gender composition, for the creation and amplification of solidarity economy cooperative (SEC) members' income. It is known that the governance of these organizations affects their ability to provide work and income to millions of disfranchised people around the world. However, the relationship between the governance of SECs, their members' gender, and their income remains under‐investigated and under‐theorized. To bridge this gap, we employ the qualitative comparative analysis method to investigate different dimensions of the governance of 327 small Brazilian SECs. Our results indicate two governance configurations that are highly likely to lead to the production and increase of members' income. In general, our results show that the most successful SECs in this regard are those that adopt more traditional governance structures and have a prevalence of male members. Our findings also indicate that democratic aspect of SEC governance must be coupled with other governance structures in order to deliver the expected results. Our results will be of interest to both scholars and SEC leaders for better understanding and managing the connection between the governance of these organizations and their members' income generation.

Gender in nonprofit organizations: A critical review and research agenda

“…The article by Teixeira et al (2021) is also an example of articles in which gender is not merely included as a variable but where it also is central to the article's aim, purpose and/or research questions (see List E in Supplemental file). Few of these articles, however, invoke a theoretical understanding of gender as an outcome of social processes or refer to gender theory.…”

“…Most articles in the final sample focus on either U.S. or European contexts and include studies of a variety of organizational types (e.g., associations, cooperatives, foundations, service organizations, or credit unions) and stakeholder groups (e.g., donors, volunteers, employees, managers, and trustees) as they cover a multitude of topics. These topics include, for example, charitable giving (e.g., Carboni & Eikenberry, 2021; Kou et al, 2014; Qu & Steinberg, 2017); advocacy (Mason, 2015); volunteer retention (Walk et al, 2019); volunteer management (Schreiner et al, 2018); inequalities among volunteers (Meyer & Rameder, 2021); salary levels and careers (e.g., Damman et al, 2014; Mesch & Rooney, 2008; Sampson & Moore, 2008); motivation among employees (De Cooman et al, 2011) and trustees (Ward & Miller‐Stevens, 2021); board compositions (e.g., Abzug & Galaskiewicz, 2001; Brown et al, 2012) and governance configurations (e.g., Ibsen et al, 2019; Teixeira et al, 2021); entrepreneurship (e.g., Camarena et al, 2021); organizational performance (e.g., Fulton, 2021); and occupational fraud (Holtfreter, 2008). The articles also include more topical issues in the wake of recent global developments such as the #metoo movement (Beaton et al, 2022; Gillespie et al, 2019) and the COVID‐19 pandemic (Kuenzi et al, 2021).…”

“…Our sample also includes articles that motivate more carefully the relevance of including gender as a variable and acknowledge that any identified gender differences can be the result of social processes. For example, Teixeira et al (2021) explore what combinations of different dimensions of governance and gender in solidarity economy cooperatives (SECs) that are the most likely to increase SEC members' income. In this case, gender is included because previous research has provided inconclusive results regarding the impact of gender on the performance of this type of organization.…”

Cooperative Governance and Cooperative Performance: A Systematic Literature Review

“…It is also important to know the effects of different types of interests in cooperatives (membership and investment portions) on the incentives to monitor cooperative performance. In addition, studies on the interactions among CG mechanisms (except Teixeira et al, 2021) in this context are relatively scarce.…”

Configuring the governance and management of strategic networks for higher performance

“…However, such activities require specific skills that bring us to the fourth dimension of governance called specialization (Albers et al, 2016), which refers to the existence of specialized teams and managers within the SN, aiming at improving the effectiveness of functions and carrying out the activities proposed by the network (Albers, 2005(Albers, , 2010. Specialization facilitates resource allocation and coordination of member activities, positively influencing efficiency and effectiveness (Teixeira et al, 2021). A higher level of specialization in terms of teams and groups responsible for specific tasks can facilitate collective activity effectiveness compared to an SN in which responsibilities are concentrated in one or a small number of teams.…”