ABSTRACT
This book is the result of a multi-year collaborative effort that, in December 2024, resulted in the Routledge Handbook of Cooperative Economics and Management. Both that volume and this Research Companion are part of multi-decade efforts of various research and practice communities to extend an understanding and analysis of cooperation and, specifically, cooperative enterprises (worker, agricultural, consumer, cooperatives, etc.) and related types (social enterprise, employee-owned firms, etc.) into the disciplines of economics and management. The relevance of this task is especially underscored considering the strength and vitality of cooperatives in many parts of the world and their overall role in economic development, promoting autonomy, independence, and resilience of local communities broadly, facilitating democracy in the economic sphere through their member- and community-orientation and governance rules (such as “one member, one vote” instead of “one share, one vote”), and their likely multi-faceted contribution to achieving a broader sustainable agenda that, as the Handbook’s chapters (see especially Exner & Raith in that volume) pointed out, is not well enough understood.
