ABSTRACT
The responsibility of leading cooperatives’ digital transitions generally falls to managers, who often feel overwhelmed by the expertise required. This chapter aims to re-evaluate this onus on managerial leadership by critiquing the prevalent individualistic leadership perspective rooted in contingency theory. We advocate for a shift towards a collectivistic perspective of leadership that is better aligned with cooperative values of collective action and democratic control, while also recognizing assets in frameworks of inter-cooperation. We focus on cooperative associations, which play a crucial role in stimulating the pooling and sharing of knowledge and resources. A collectivistic perspective provides a useful lens to uncover the leadership practices that emerge out of frameworks of inter-organizational collaboration and can be particularly relevant to study and support a diversification of digital change strategies for the cooperative movement.
