(Patología de las Cooperativas de Producción Rural – Evidencia de Irán)

In most developing countries, numerous researchers have conducted extensive research on the effectiveness and success of rural and agricultural cooperatives. For example, in Turkey, Ethiopia, China and some other countries, it has been shown that various damages can be observed and identified in the development of rural and agricultural cooperatives (Mohammed and Lee, 2015; Gulen, 2013; Abebaw and Haile, 2013). These damages are classified and presented in categories such as individual, organizational and educational factors.

The results of Delgado (2007) study showed that production cooperatives increase the participation of villagers in rural development programs and equitable distribution of resources and equal access to economic and social opportunities for villagers.

Bazrafshan and Shahin (2010) studied the pathology of rural production cooperatives in Iran. The results of this study showed that the most important harms that threaten production cooperatives are: limited members “knowledge of the principles and philosophy of forming production cooperatives, cooperatives” tendency to provide services, poor training of cooperative members, limited capital, rural dispersion and population decline. The tendency of cooperatives towards the government, limited trust or distrust of members in cooperatives, lack of cooperation and acceptance of members’ responsibilities, lack of attention to the marketing of agricultural products, lack of specific rules about cooperatives.

Siegal (2010) in his research considers the most important role of cooperatives in the field of sustainable agricultural development as the distribution of wealth in order to achieve social justice, providing tools for villagers, eliminating unnecessary intermediaries in work and agricultural activities and expanding education among members.

Bigleri et al. (2013) in relation to empowerment strategies of production cooperatives from the perspective of national and provincial experts showed that empowerment of production cooperatives is: the process of improving the individual, group and organizational capacity of all individuals and organizations involved in the activities of production cooperatives and Also, creating appropriate social and economic conditions with the ultimate goal is to increase the productivity of production cooperatives.

Abi Bao and Hailey (2013) studied the role of cooperatives in accelerating the adoption of agricultural technologies by small farmers in Ethiopia. The results of this study showed that cooperatives can be used to transfer appropriate technologies, especially for small-scale farmers, and thus to empower people in local communities.

Heidari et al. (2015) in the study of indicators for identifying successful agricultural cooperatives showed that the most important indicators for identifying the success of cooperatives can be divided into six dimensions: economic, social, legal, managerial, individual and educational.

Wossen et al. (2017) in their study examined the impact of increasing access to cooperative membership on technology acceptance and family welfare in Nigeria using various techniques. The results of this study show that cooperative membership has a positive and significant effect on access to acceptance of technology and increase family welfare.

Khosravi-pour and Ahmadi (2017) investigated the challenges and strategies for the development of rural production cooperatives. The result of this research showed that, the low starting capital of companies at the time of establishment, the government’s increased attempts to form rural cooperatives, and contextualize and inform farmers regarding different regions to form a cooperative to the will of farmers, the impotence of managers and farmers’ infirm belief in the formation of a cooperative and group work in rural production cooperatives are among the restrictions that such cooperatives are struggling.

Arayesh (2017) investigated the relationship between extension educational, psychological factors and the participation of members of agricultural co-operative in Iran. The result of research showed that there was a significant relationship between the extension educational, psychological features and level of participation of members of agricultural co-operative.

Grashus and Su (2018) reviewed the theoretical and empirical literature of cooperatives and examined issues such as members ‘attitudes, cooperative performance, ownership, governance, and cooperatives’ financial capital. The result of this research showed that cooperative membership is found to positively impact price, yield, input adoption, income, and other indicators of member performance. The results of this study emphasize that the inefficiency of cooperatives is mostly due to increased heterogeneity in the attitudes and goals of members, especially in terms of commitment and participation of members in cooperative activities.

Nekouie et al. (2019) investigated the stability of farming system in rural production cooperatives. The result of this research showed that this type of farming system is semi-stable. Developmental strategy (SO) was adopted as the best strategy to achieve sustainability, and the focus was on endogenous development through reinforcing internal strengths to obtain external opportunities. It includes promoting self-reliance through increasing members’ participation in cooperative, empowering the staff and members (i.e. the experienced managing director and the staff with required specialty and expert holding promotional classes), using multilevel, multi-sectorial, multi-cluster, collaborative, and holistic approaches to manage the RPCs, and promoting systems based on collaborative team work.

The present study is an applied research in terms of purpose and descriptive-survey research in terms of data collection [Sarmad et al., 2017]. This research is also a type of field research in which the researcher is present to collect data in the desired areas. The statistical population of this research is 55 rural production cooperatives. In this statistical population, 217 members of cooperatives as well as 98 members of the board of directors of cooperatives participated in the survey. For effective pathology of rural production cooperatives in Iran, seven indicators were used in the questionnaire. These seven indicators include (managerial structure, economic activities, technical activities, infrastructure, empowerment (educational activities, extension and creativity and innovations), deprivation special privileges, observance of laws and regulations and instructions) has been considered and appropriate variables have been considered for each index. In general, in the pathology of cooperatives, three general indicators of performance, effectiveness and participation were used. In this research, Cronbach’s alpha method was used to determine the reliability of the instrument (Table 2). Cronbach’s alpha for the whole questionnaire was 0.810 (Equation 1 was used to calculate Cronbach’s alpha).

Equation 1:

Table 2

Cronbach’s alpha coefficient for questionnaire

The KMO coefficient was used for factor validity of the research instrument (questionnaire), which was calculated in three general indicators (Kalantari, 2018) of performance, effectiveness and participation that in all these indicators, it was higher than the desired level (0.75) (Table 3).

Table 3

KMO measure and Bartlett’s test to assess appropriateness of the research instrument (questionnaire)

For a more appropriate and desirable review of the research results, the classification of pathologies performed is as follows:

Pathology 1: Adverse characteristics in cooperative members

The average age of members of rural production cooperatives in Iran is high, so that the results show that the average age of members of cooperatives is close to 47 years, so that 34% of the sample members are over 50 years old and only 11 percent of the members were under 30 years old. The majority of members of production cooperatives are men (95%), so the research findings indicate a low presence of women in production cooperatives. In terms of the level of education of cooperative members, it is very unfavorable that 6% of the statistical sample is illiterate and 44% of the statistical population has education in reading, writing, elementary and middle school and only 27% of university students have postgraduate, bachelor or higher education. 41% of the statistical samples own less than half a hectare of land and this is a major problem and agricultural infrastructure in Iran. Only 38% of people associate with production cooperatives on a weekly basis 58% of the members are in contact with the cooperative at least once a month, which is a sign of the good relationship of the members with the cooperative, and 6% of the members rarely and compulsorily have no connection with the cooperatives, which is contrary to the principles of cooperatives.

Table 4

Individual characteristics of members of rural production cooperatives

Pathology 2: Adverse characteristics in cooperatives management

Literature revealed that management of cooperatives is a crucial factor to success or failure. Forty-two percent of the members stated that they have little or no follow-up on the insurance of their products by production cooperatives, and only 32% of the members stated that they follow up the insurance of their products more or more completely by the production cooperatives. This statistic indicates that cooperatives should make more efforts to insure their members’ products so that members can produce their products with more confidence. 43% of the statistical sample of cooperation of production cooperatives to sell their products stated no or very little, and 34% of most or all of their products were produced by production cooperatives. This statistic indicates that production cooperatives should make more efforts to sell their members’ products.

Table 5

Management characteristics of rural production cooperatives

Pathology 3: Lack of communication, trust and participation of members with the management of cooperatives

Another important disadvantage of the development of production cooperatives is that despite decades of activity of such companies, cooperative members do not have effective communication, trust and partnership with its management.

Table 6

Communication, trust and participation of members with the management of cooperatives

Source: 5-point Likert scale: 1=very low, 2=low, 3=medium 4=high and 5= very high.

Pathology 4: Low social activity of members in cooperatives

Although one of the ways to empower the local community is to use cooperatives and involve rural people in social activities, but it seems that after several decades of rural production cooperatives in Iran, these companies have not yet been able to lay the groundwork. Perform such activities.

Table 7

Social activity of members in cooperatives

Source: 5-point Likert scale: 1=very low, 2=low, 3=medium 4=high and 5= very high.

Pathology 5: Lack of effective training for cooperative members

Education is the most effective way to transfer innovation and empower the local community. Production cooperatives were expected to make better use of this approach to empower people, but research shows that the training provided was inadequate and ineffective.

Table 8

Training for cooperative members

Source: 5-point Likert scale: 1=very low, 2=low, 3=medium 4=high and 5= very high.

Pathology 6: Dissatisfaction with cooperative performance

One of the serious damage of rural production cooperatives in Iran is the dissatisfaction of members with the areas of work and improper performance of the company in these cases. The better management of cooperatives in performing their tasks, could be the greater the satisfaction of cooperative with the structural factors of cooperatives. Therefore, members are more committed to cooperative behavior, and show positive feedback to cooperative management which leads to the better performance of cooperative management (Najafi et al., 2019).

Table 9

Dissatisfaction with cooperative performance

Source: 5-point Likert scale: 1=very low, 2=low, 3=medium 4=high and 5= very high.

Pathology 7: Lack of social capital

Research results show that at the 95% level, there is a positive and significant relationship between the variables of the degree of relationship and the degree of participation of members with production cooperatives and its success. In this regard, the more communication cooperatives members have and the more members participate in cooperative activities, the more successful the production cooperatives will be (Table 10).

Table 10

Relationship between social characteristics of members of production cooperatives with education index

Empowerment of rural people and development of local community is the most important development goal for the developing countries of the world. After the Second World War, in most countries of the world, in order to balance the region and develop the rural and agricultural sectors, carry out land reforms in the development programs of the countries. Iran also carried out land reforms in the country in the early 60’s (1963) and one of the most important strategies for the development of rural communities in this program was to use the capacity of cooperatives and establish rural production cooperatives. Nearly 60 years after the establishment and development of rural production cooperatives, it seems that these cooperatives have not been able to be effective and successful in achieving the predetermined goals. The present study was conducted with the aim of pathology of Iranian rural production cooperatives. The results showed that at least six categories of damaged can be listed for these cooperatives, which are:

— Adverse characteristics in cooperative members

— Adverse characteristics in cooperatives management

— Lack of communication, trust and participation of members with the management of cooperatives

— Low social activity of members in cooperatives

— Lack of effective training for cooperative members

— Dissatisfaction with cooperative performance

— Lack of social capital

In the present study, while enumerating the indicators of cooperative failure, it was tried to emphasize the most important influential variables in each index. In the present study, while enumerating the indicators of cooperative failure, it was tried to emphasize the most important influential variables in each index. As well as Nekouie et al. (2019) believed in rural sustainable development planning, sustainable farming systems must be considered as the focal core of any development plan. Since a big part of farming system in rural areas is devoted to smallholdings, promoting cooperation culture by the rural development planners can prepare the ground for empowering the villagers to obtain sustainable development.

The result of research relived that members’ knowledge of their cooperative, member technological skills and their participation at cooperative meetings and training courses were especially important for the successful development of farmer cooperatives in the less developed. Also training and education, as one of the cooperative principles, has been recognized as an important actor for the successful development of cooperatives worldwide. The results revealed that regular training has partially increased members’ understanding and knowledge on cooperatives and their potentials. This study further suggested that the participatory approach such as role playing is an efficient training tool for the members with limited education.

The results show that the level of education index in production cooperatives is related to the level of trust, satisfaction and greater participation among members, since the research results indicate a positive and significant effect of education on the success of cooperatives. Therefore, it is suggested that any kind of planning to develop the level of satisfaction, trust and participation can lead to improving the level of education and success in cooperatives and vice versa.