3 February at 15.30 at Euricse
Darina ZAIMOVA, post-doc fellow in Euricse for the academic year 2010/2011 and Assistant Professor in Management Department at Trakia University in Bulgaria will present her research.
The main focus of the seminar will be on how cooperatives adapt and transform into a compatible part of the agri food chain. Their development and efficiency have become a function not only of local initiative and social responsibility, but also of management capacity to adapt to dynamic business conditions and to adjust to the institutional environment. One important aspect is that market power is not the only part of the overall efficiency equation. There are still other resources of efficiency that could be exploited by cooperatives, but not modified or changed by them. These efficiency resources refer to the institutional environment and its attributes, including: legislation, enforcement regimes and ensuing contracts arrangements, and social characteristics of the informal relations.
From this starting point the missing perspective is of comparison of Bulgarian cooperatives to the similar organizational structures in the European Union. The cooperative movement in Italy (Province of Trento) is an appropriate case considering the government and agricultural policy framework; the role of the local authorities and administrative intervention; and last but not least the co-operative society and its traditions.
