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The MSc-thesis of Wageningen University scholar Sabrina Samson, evaluates the social and economic performance by mapping differences in opinion on the 9percveived) performance on the cooperatives’s service and internal governance.

Performance and dynamics of Uruguayan Cooperatives: MSc thesis – Sabrina Samson

The survey on belongingness of cooperatives members with their organization has been analyzed in more detail in the MSc thesis of Sabrina Samson. She analyzed a random sample of nine cooperatives. As part of the ESFIM-Program, the study focused on “Finance, capitalization and membership of cooperatives”, related to difficulties of Uruguayan cooperatives to generate their own capital. This problem can be stretched out even further, since in case of lending, the bank requires collateral, which in Uruguay is common to be provided by the board members personally. Through this, board members are discouraged to engage in more dynamic business strategies. A weak sense of belonging of members to the cooperatives can makes the cooperative functioning inefficient. The research objective of this study was to evaluate the social and economic performance of Uruguayan cooperatives by mapping differences between cooperatives and their members in relation to their perceptions on the performance of the cooperative’s service provisioning and internal governance systems. The study used a mixed design of qualitative and quantitative research methods on a random sample of Uruguayan cooperatives. Through Principal Component analysis two social performance indicators were distilled from the questionnaire, and compared with three economic performance indicators: return on equity, turnover per member and leverage of external capital.

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