ABSTRACT
This contribution has two tasks: firstly, to outline the birth and development of a multidisciplinary research program based on evolutionary approaches to the analysis of cooperation and cooperative behaviors, including three derivative “mid-range” (neither macro nor micro) methodological approaches: Boolean networks, social network analysis, and agent-based modeling. Secondly, it anticipates what may be gained from applying these approaches to cooperative enterprises based on a survey of related applications. It concludes that, while it has largely not been carried out, much can be gained from applications of such process-based approaches to analyzing and evaluating important dimensions of cooperative enterprises, including issues of democratization, dilemmas between commercial and member-oriented priorities, questions of transmitting cooperative values, marketing, as well as issues connecting sustainability, interpreted broadly, to the cooperative form itself.
