Two Decades of Cooperative Performance Research: Trends and Future Research Suggestions

Abstract

Cooperatives occupy a distinctive position in the global economy: member-owned, member-controlled enterprises that must simultaneously satisfy market discipline and social purpose. Over the past twenty years, scholarly interest in how to define, measure, and explain cooperative performance has grown substantially, but the field remains fragmented across agricultural economics, management, finance, and the social economy literature. This paper synthesises that body of work through a PRISMA-guided review of systematic literature reviews (SLRs) and bibliometric studies on cooperative performance indexed in Scopus and Web of Science between 2006 and 2026. Thirteen candidate meta-studies were identified and screened, of which nine were retained for narrative synthesis. The review traces a shift from narrow, single-dimension financial and efficiency measures dominant in the mid-2000s toward multidimensional frameworks incorporating governance, member welfare, and since roughly 2018, environmental, social and governance (ESG) and sustainability performance. Methodologically, the field has moved from descriptive and case-based work toward panel-data econometrics, though qualitative and mixed-methods studies remain scarce. The review critically discusses persistent weaknesses endogeneity and self-selection bias, financial-indicator dominance, geographic and sectoral skew toward agricultural cooperatives in Europe and North America, and the absence of a consensus performance construct and offers recommendations for future research, practice, and policy.