The effectiveness of community organizations depends on the existence of pillars of good governance like, participation, accountability, transparency, predictability and rule of law. Effective participation of members in their organizations ensures the vigilance, which is essential to create sense of responsibility among the board and the personnel. This paper therefore, aims at assessing the g...

BACKGROUND To perform out-of-hours primary care, Dutch general practitioners (GPs) have organised themselves in large-scale GP cooperatives. Roughly, two models of out-of-hours care can be distinguished; GP cooperatives working separate from the hospital emergency department (ED) and GP cooperatives integrated with the hospital ED. Research has shown differences in care utilisation between thes...

This article describes the organizational characteristics of the UNIMED medical cooperative in Brazil. After an overview of UNIMED's share in the current health plan market, the author analyzes its organizational structure, historical evolution, and contractual regimen with member physicians, including the formula used to calculate the payment schedule for physician services. The plan currently...

Electronic commerce as one of the most important of Innovation aspects in the process of doing business is used by many organizations and companies in the world. Cooperatives as the main part of the country's economy have fundamental role in improving and promoting of economic. Therefore, innovation methods and tools, new processes and perform business tasks such as e-commerce will play an i...

Electronic commerce as one of the most important of Innovation aspects in the process of doing business is used by many organizations and companies in the world. Cooperatives as the main part of the country's economy have fundamental role in improving and promoting of economic. Therefore, innovation methods and tools, new processes and perform business tasks such as e-commerce will play an i...

The purpose of this paper is to empirically assess the relationship existing between local financial development and the growth of firms, with a special focus on cooperatives. More in detail, the interest is in investigating whether local banking development impacts differently on the growth of cooperative firms, as compared to partnerships and corporations. To pursue this aim, using Italian da...

This paper concerns the paradoxes and dilemmas that the very successful "Chinese model" presents for transition theory. The "Chinese model" is centered on the development of township-village enterprises. The main purpose of this paper is to make the case that TVE's are not just some form of disguised capitalist institution; they are much better described as "vaguely defined cooperatives" meanin...

BACKGROUND After a contact with a primary care physician (PCP) cooperative for out-of-hours care, many patients have subsequent contact with health care. Little is known about the factors associated with these follow-up contacts. The objective of this study was to examine whether patient experiences with nurse telephone consultations and the cooperative's organizational characteristics were ass...

Peter T. Leeson’s The Invisible Hook provides an illuminating economic analysis of how pirates established governance structures regulating their organization. Leeson is successful in showing economic rationales for piratical institutions and adopts the view of the piratical enterprise as a for-profit business firm to further illustrate the point. This essay argues, however, that modern theorie...