ABSTRACT
This book examines the opportunities opened up for financial cooperatives by the recent financial crisis, and explores the role of these institutions in promoting and sustaining local development. The global financial crisis has not only shown the limits of the mainstream theory of markets and rational expectations, but has also generated a great deal of disillusionment with the banking system and underlined the importance of a healthy society for the welfare of the individual. Consequently, new and innovative ways of providing finance are needed, especially for strengthening the development of local societies.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
part I|72 pages
Stakeholder-oriented versus profit-maximizing banks
chapter 2|18 pages
Governance and performance
Reassessing the pre-crisis situation of European banks
1
part II|85 pages
From cooperative banks to local societies
chapter 5|18 pages
The case for proactive cooperative banks and local development
Innovation, growth, and community building in Almería, Spain
chapter 7|21 pages
Homo dictyous transforms homo oeconomicus
The social network culture of Hellenic cooperative banking in Crete
1
chapter 8|14 pages
Innovative approaches to generating and using cooperative capital
Observations from France and Germany
part III|56 pages
Microfinance and local development
chapter 9|19 pages
Re-discovering a paradigm
The promotion of savings by credit unions within the UK policy context of asset-based welfare
