The Growth of Italian Cooperatives ― Innovation, Resilience and Social Responsibility

The Italian Cooperative Sector is amongst the largest in the world comprising 60,000 cooperatives from all sectors of the economy. Cooperatives created close to thirty percent of new jobs 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 in the market and grow even during the global financial crisis. This volume sets out to explain how cooperatives have managed to compete in a socially responsible way and in alignment with cooperative principles. This book outlines how the enabling legislation, leadership from peak bodies, economic and financial networks, promoting new cooperative markets, promoting entrepreneurship via the cooperative development fund and the development of large cooperative group of companies have led to continued growth.

Finally, The Growth of Italian Cooperatives examines how cooperatives managed the Global Financial Crisis and the economics of the cooperative firm and how cooperatives demonstrate their social responsible credentials and their changing cooperative identity is discussed. This book will be vital reading to those members of the academic community that are primarily interested in the social economy; the theory of cooperative enterprises, democratic management, business strategies, local economic development, job creation schemes, politics of inclusion and wealth re-distribution as well as civil economy economists and public servants.

Dr Piero Ammirato is an Honorary Fellow, Politics and Public Policy, at Deakin University, Melbourne, Australia.