Creating Value In/With Cooperatives With Technology and Operations Management

This seminar addresses various research directions regarding cooperatives. Cooperatives, such as FrieslandCampina, FloraHolland and Rabobank, consist of a society of members and an enterprise, where the former owns the latter. They differ from listed or privately owned companies in the many stakeholders that have a say in the operations. This makes it seemingly hard to remain competitive. However, cooperatives have gradually gained market share over the last decades. The game theoretic research is geared towards identifying the circumstances when cooperatives create superior value. Topics relevant for technology and operations management are incentives, organization of the supply chain, information design, organizational design, and cognition.