The legitimacy of the cooperative model: A consensus towards the factors that lead to the neglect of the cooperative model in educational institutions.

Details

Supervisors

Dufays, Frédéric

Faculty

Louvain School of Management

Degree label

Master [120] en ingénieur de gestion

Abstract

The cooperative model is far from being widely familiar and taught in most of institutions such as schools and support structures for entrepreneurship. However, while many authors recognize the advantages of this model, only a few studies take the trouble to discuss the reasons for the cooperative unawareness. Through a consensus approach, the Delphi method permitted a collective decision-making between 16 experts selected and divided into two panels. The first one regroups professors and postgraduates who have shown a significant interest for cooperatives in their courses and/or fields of research. The second one gathers experts from different support structures for social and cooperative entrepreneurship. After three rounds of data collection and analysis, the 20 most important factors were ranked into two sub-lists for both panels. One of the Top 10 focuses on the reasons for the cooperative disinterest in the higher education system whereas the other offers more general factors that led to the cooperative ignorance among entrepreneurs and the general public. In conclusion, several suggestions are made to change the trend of a single lane in economy teaching. Many stakeholders invoked and closely linked may have the opportunity to send an impactful message to students and entrepreneurs in order to increase the cooperative model awareness.