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Abstract
It is often observed that members have little interest in monitoring their
cooperatives. One explanation is that the members are free riders, hoping
that others will perform the task. Another explanation is that the weak
member interest is a consequence of members having trust in the leadership.
These competing explanations refer to the theory of collective action and the
social capital paradigm, respectively, and may be linked to the classical
Gesellschaft and Gemeinschaft concepts. Hence, one may expect free-rider
behavior when conditions of Gesellschaft exist and trustful behavior when
Gemeinschaft conditions rule. These propositions get support from five
previous studies of members’ readership of the annual reports of their
cooperative. In large and heterogeneous memberships there is free-riding
behavior, which explains the members’ low interest in governing their
cooperatives. To a limited extent a membership may have a subset of
members who trust the leadership so they do not read the annual reports.