The Growth of Italian Cooperatives

The Growth of Italian Cooperatives

Author: Piero Ammirato

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2018-04-27

Total Pages: 228

ISBN-13: 1351657607

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The Italian Cooperative Sector is amongst the largest in the world comprising over 60,000 cooperatives from all sectors of the economy directly employing 1.3 million people. Cooperatives created close to 30 percent of new jobs in Italy between 2001 and 2011 demonstrating that democratic cooperative enterprises can successfully operate in a market economy combining economic success and social responsibility. These offer a viable alternative to profit maximising enterprises and an opportunity to create a more pluralist and democratic market economy. The Growth of Italian Cooperatives: Innovation, Resilience and Social Responsibility comprehensively explains how the Italian cooperative sector has managed to compete successfully in the global economy and to grow during the global financial crisis. This book will comprehensively explain how the Italian cooperative movement has managed to grow into a large successful network of cooperatives. It will examine the legislative framework and their unique business model that allows it to compete in the market as part of a network that includes central cooperative associations, financial and economic consortia, and financial companies. It will explore cooperative entrepreneurship through a discussion of the formation of cooperative groups, start-ups, worker-buyouts and the promotion of entirely new sectors such as the social services sector. Finally, The Growth of Italian Cooperatives examines how cooperatives have managed the GFC and how their behavior differs from private enterprises. It will also analyze the extent to which cooperatives compete while still uphold the key cooperative principles and fulfil their social responsibility. This book is an interdisciplinary study of cooperative development and is designed to inform members of the academic community, government, public policy makers and cooperative managers that are primarily interested in economic democracy, economics of the cooperative enterprise, cooperative networks and economic development, cooperative legislation, democratic governance, job creation programs, politics of inclusion and how wealth can be more equitably distributed.


Cooperative Enterprises

Cooperative Enterprises

Author: Piero Ammirato

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2024-03-25

Total Pages: 410

ISBN-13: 1040004652

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Cooperative Enterprises is the first textbook to examine the evolution of the cooperative enterprise model and the contribution that cooperatives can make to the economy and society. It provides an accessible overview of the subject, looking at history, cooperative models, theories, legislation, and governance. Cooperative Enterprises takes an international approach throughout, drawing on examples from cooperatives from across the globe. The book offers a valuable historical perspective, placing cooperatives within their political, social, cultural, and economic contexts since the Industrial Revolution. It analyses and compares the cooperative law of 26 jurisdictions and showcases key defining moments for cooperative enterprises, cooperative development models, cooperative‐specific good practice standards, and compares the cooperative model with the private enterprise model, giving readers a comprehensive view of the subject. The book also demonstrates that cooperatives correct the market, complement the role of the state, support local economic development, reduce income and wealth inequalities, promote social cohesion, and promote economic democracy. Students are supported with a range of pedagogical features, including case studies, tables, figures, chapter summaries, and discussion questions to encourage critical thinking. This is the ideal textbook for undergraduate and postgraduate courses on cooperative studies, and will also be an illuminating resource for students, researchers, and policymakers interested in social enterprise, business history, economic history, corporate governance, economic democracy, and community development.


The Civic Foundations of Fascism in Europe

The Civic Foundations of Fascism in Europe

Author: Dylan Riley

Publisher: Verso Books

Published: 2019-01-29

Total Pages: 321

ISBN-13: 1786635232

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A historical look at the emergence of fascism in Europe Drawing on a Gramscian theoretical perspective and development a systematic comparative approach, The Civic Foundations of Fascism in Europe: Italy, Spain and Romania 1870-1945 challenges the received Tocquevillian consensus on authoritarianism by arguing that fascist regimes, just like mass democracies, depended on well-organized, rather than weak and atomized, civil societies. In making this argument the book focuses on three crucial cases of inter-war authoritarianism: Italy, Spain and Romania, selected because they are all counter-intuitive from the perspective of established explanations, while usefully demonstrating the range of fascist outcomes in interwar Europe. Civic Foundations argues that, in all three cases, fascism emerged because the rapid development of voluntary associations combined with weakly developed political parties among the dominant class thus creating a crisis of hegemony. Riley then traces the specific form that this crisis took depending on the form of civil society development (autonomous- as in Italy, elite dominated as in Spain, or state dominated as in Romania) in the nineteenth century.


Social Economy in China and the World

Social Economy in China and the World

Author: Ngai Pun

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2015-08-20

Total Pages: 308

ISBN-13: 1317512537

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Thirty-years of economic transformation has turned China into one of the major players in the global capitalist economy. However, its economic growth has generated rising problems in inequality, alienation, and sustainability with the agrarian crises of the 1990s giving rise to real social outcry to the extent that they became the object of central government policy reformulations. Contributing to a paradigm-shift in the theory and practices of economic development, this book examines the concept of social economy in China and around the world. It offers to rethink space, economy and community in a trans-border context which moves us beyond both planned and market economies. The chapters address theoretical issues, critical reflections and case studies on the practice of social economy in the context of globalization and its attempt to create an alternative modernity. Through this, the book builds a platform for further cross-disciplinary and cross-boundary dialogue on the future of social economy in China and the world. With examples from Asia, North America, Latin America and Europe this book will not only appeal to students and scholars of Chinese and Asian social policy and development, but also those of social economy from an international perspective.


Cooperative Enterprises in Australia and Italy

Cooperative Enterprises in Australia and Italy

Author: Anthony Jensen

Publisher: Firenze University Press

Published: 2015-12-18

Total Pages: 308

ISBN-13: 8866558672

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This book arises from a three-year comparative research program concerning co-operative enterprises in Australia and Italy. The book explores the historical development, legal framework and the peak organisations of co-operatives in the two countries. Specific comparative chapters focus on consumer, credit, and worker-producer co-operatives. The book deepens the analysis of co-operatives by containing chapters that examine specific theoretical and empirical issues such as the theory of co-operative firms as collective entrepreneurial action. Monographic chapters include more in depth analysis of specific typologies of co-operatives, such as social and community oriented co-operatives, some of which were created to contrast organized crime in Southern Italy. The book concludes with an assessment of the implications of the project for public policy.


Victorian Radicals and Italian Democrats

Victorian Radicals and Italian Democrats

Author: Marcella Pellegrino Sutcliffe

Publisher: Boydell & Brewer Ltd

Published: 2014

Total Pages: 266

ISBN-13: 0861933222

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An examination of the links between radicalism in Victorian England, and the Risorgimento movement in Italy. This book provides powerful new insights into the history of Italy's long Risorgimento, by tracing the entanglements of the Mazzinian "international". This informal group of men and women crossed the boundary of the Channel and the boundary of class to speak a common language and share a radical ideal: Giuseppe Mazzini's vision of a unified, republican Italy. Published in the radical press, the exile's writings on democracy, education, association and citizenship inspired both Oxford social reformers and self-improving artisans gathering in provincial reading rooms, co-operative societies, republican clubs and educational institutes: for them republican Italy became a transnationaldream. Indeed, when Italy was unified under a constitutional monarch in 1861, British Mazzinians were bitterly disappointed. Setting off for Italy on their first "co-operative tour" in 1888, East London workers embarked on an educational pilgrimage, dotted with Mazzinian landmarks. Despite the fin de siècle crisis, Victorian radicals' enduring faith in Italy's democratic future remained steadfast. Indeed, when Fascists subsequently appropriated Mazzini's national dream, post-Victorian Mazzinians would unequivocally voice their support for Italian anti-Fascists, who championed the principles of global democracy. Drawing on a wide range of material, the author adds a crucialnew dimension to the history of Victorian radicalism in Britain, and to the "new history of the Risorgimento". Marcella Pellegrino Sutcliffe is a Research Fellow of Clare Hall, University of Cambridge.


La Lega

La Lega

Author: Piero Ammirato

Publisher: Dartmouth Publishing Group

Published: 1996

Total Pages: 392

ISBN-13:

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This volume represents the first in-depth study in the English language of the Italian cooperative movement - the largest in Europe with over 70,000 active cooperatives. In the region of Emilia Romagna alone they produce close to 25% of the regional GDP. In particular, he examines the history, the values, the strategy, organisational structure and culture of La Lega (The National League of Cooperatives) which associates 11,000 cooperatives from all sectors employing 220,000 people and as a group of enterprises have become Italy's fourth largest export earner. It is the sheer size and success of these cooperatives that provides practical proof that there is an alternative to private enterprise capitalism namely democratic, collectively owned cooperatives.The main aim of this book is to identify the factors which have enabled cooperatives in Italy to overcome some of the economic and political barriers normally faced by them when competing in Western market economies through an analysis of the relationship that has developed between cooperatives, La Lega and the State.Topics discussed include: an historical overview of cooperative development in Europe and North America; a comparative study of the cooperative sectors in Britain and Mondragon; a discussion on the political and economic barriers faced by cooperatives; an historical analysis of cooperative development in Italy; an explanation of how La Lega operates and how it represents cooperatives' interests in the economic, political and social sphere; original case studies of cooperatives and consortia explain how financial, management and other barriers have been overcome; and, finally, an extensive discussion on the specific character of the Italian State and an explanation of why and when the State is most likely to support cooperatives.