Social Responsibility in Cooperatives: a Contribution for Sustainability

Europe is in a deep economic crisis and social economy and cooperatives are getting more interest by academics, firms and politicians because they can contribute to the economic, social and environmental development, in a sustainable and responsible way, being key for the implementation of new employment sources and the expansion of social responsibility as a development mean. The aim of this working paper is to identify the factors underlying the differences in the SR behaviour of small and medium labour cooperatives, one of the main categories of social economy in different European regions. Based on the literature review, we propose a selection of factors that may be in the roots of the SR. First, the cooperative’s principles are assumed at the basis of the values of the cooperative firm. In this case, we discuss the relevance of the leaders’ alignment with these values as factors influencing the SR heterogeneity. Second, the alignment of the cooperative values among different internal stakeholders is taking into account and, finally, the degree of implementation of these cooperative values into social initiatives is affected by the relationship with internal and external stakeholders.