Identifying the antecedents of opportunism in agri?food cooperatives: a comparative analysis between first? and second?tier cooperatives

Agri-food cooperatives allow farmers to improve their competitiveness and bargaining power. However, the specificities of organizational form, in which owners are decision makers, suppliers, clients, open door conflicts interest. Members’ opportunism comes aftermath this adversely affects cooperatives’ performance. Hence, knowing antecedents these undesirable opportunistic behaviors is an important management concern. This study analyzes factors that promote cooperative members by exploring differences between memberships first-tier second-tier cooperatives. To end, ordinary least squares linear regression model with interaction terms was estimated. The results show case cooperatives, environmental uncertainty, members’ heterogeneity, cooperative's market orientation increase opportunism, while dependence on cooperative, long-term relationship, reduce it. For our reveal increases reduces Moreover, we find orientation, uncertainty have different effects each type membership.