Accountability and Transparency in Cooperatives: A Comparative Analysis between Portugal and Germany

This study aims to assess whether the legislation on internal and external supervisory mechanisms in force for German cooperatives allows a more adequate accountability transparency terms of financial reporting compared model adopted Portugal. For this purpose, through qualitative methodology, using content analysis technique multiple case model, total partial compliance indexes were constructed by country cooperatives' selected sample. The results show that analysed present index higher than 50% all categories. However, categories, percentage Portuguese cooperatives, thus leading main conclusion supervision provides level transparency.