The Affecting Factors About The Growth Of Farmer Professional Cooperative: A Perspective From Stakeholders

Farmer professional cooperative(FPC), which contributes a great deal to increasingfarmers' income and promoting the construction of modern agriculture, plays an importantrole in agricultural industry. Since the Law of the People's Republic of China on FarmerProfessional Cooperatives was promulgated in2007, China has witnessed a rapid growthmomentum of cooperative organizations. By the end of September2011, the number of FPCsreached484,300. The wide distribution of industry and diversity of service content hasbecome one of the outstanding characteristics during the process of countryside reform anddevelopment in recent years, and also becomes focal research field among scholars. A FPC, asa new type of the rural economic cooperative organization, has a little difference inestablishing principles from the enterprises, but still can be regarded as a series of contractconnections,"a system arrangement for the control and management of the professionalinvestment". So its existence and development can't be separated from the influence andeffect of each professional investor, as well as the professional and sustained capital input.The growth of FPCs is a process, in which can comprehensively balance the interestrelationship and realize the benefit maximization. Thus, the analysis on the composition ofstakeholders of FPCs, as well as the interest relationship and appeals, is the inevitable demandfor the research on the growth of FPCs. It also has very important theoretical and realisticsignificance to improve the healthy growth of FPCs and help the stakeholders, especially thegovernment, understand the relationships with the organization.At present, the research from the perspective of stakeholders is very rare, and theviewpoints are diverse and a systematic theoretical framework hasn't been formed. Therefore,the purpose of this dissertation is to study on influence factors of growth of FPCs with thefresh perspective of the stakeholders.With the application of the Institutional Change Theory, the Transaction Cost Theory, theIndustrial Organization Theory, the Enterprise Growth Theory, and the Theory ofStakeholders, this dissertation analyses the motivation of the growth of FPCs, based on thefully understanding of research development in this field.Then this dissertation introduces the stakeholder theory to FPCs growth model, in orderto analyze interest conflicts and coordination between FPCs and stakeholder. Through thequestionnaire survey method,73cooperatives as random samples have been interviewed. It ismade the measure index weight to find out each sample FPCs' growth index by using analytic hierarchy process. At the same time, the empirical analysis model which can reflects the waystakeholders influence development FPCs is constructed. Finally, measures and strategicchoice of FPCs in our country to promote the growth is given in the dissertation.The main research of this dissertation is as follows:(1)A theoretical framework to analyze the roles of stakeholders in the growth of FPCs ispresented. The growth of FPCs is a progress from quantitative change to qualitative change,which includes the expansion of the scale of FPCs, as well as the qualitative leaps such asimproving the internal management structure. A FPC is like a living organism, thatexperiences initial stage, growth stage, mature stage and decline stage.Secondly, this dissertation analyzes the influence factors from inside and outside. Theinternal factors include capital, human capital, and the degree of organizational structure. Theexternal influencing factors include political and legal, economic, social and cultural,technology, community and environmental factors.Thirdly, this dissertation focuses on the reasons why stakeholders can influence growthof FPCs, the composition of stakeholders and the interests and demands of FPCs.This dissertation argues that the stakeholders of FPCs include members and leader, bigshareholders, customers, suppliers, creditors, government, community, farmers, and othereconomic organizations. According to the relationship between these stakeholders and FPCs,the stakeholders can be separated into cooperative ones, guidance ones, and related ones.Then it explores the interests and demands of organizations in this dissertation. Finally, thetheoretical framework after analyzing the effect that stakeholders probably exert on growth ofFPCs is proposed in this dissertation.(2)The method measuring the growth of FPCs is constructed. Growth, the developingability of FPCs, is an important index to measure the growth of FPCs. Considering theinfluence factors of the growth of FPCs, this dissertation argues that growth has fourcharacteristics, benefit, market, expansibility and sustainability. An evaluation index system isthen proposed to evaluate the growth of FPCs, through the collection of experts' opinions.(3)Influencing factors on the growth of FPCs is empirical analyzed. Based on the view ofstakeholders, using questionnaires for73FPCs in Liaoning Province, this dissertationanalyzes influencing factors of the growth of FPCs.First, it makes a descriptive analysis that how each main stakeholder influence on thegrowth of a FPC, then it sets the variable according to the results, builds quantitative analysismodel, puts forward a hypothesis, uses the measurement software STATA10to have anempirical test, and analyzes the test results. In brief, the influence factors of stakeholders on the growth of FPCs are analyzed both normatively and empirically.(4)The strategic choice to enhance the growth of FPCs is proposed. Based on the aboveresults, this dissertation proposes the strategic choice in the view of stakeholders. From theperspective of members, FPCs should strengthen quality education; promote effectivedemocratic decision-making mechanism among members, effectively weakening membersshare differences; build reasonable allocation mechanism to meet profit demand of both thecore member and the ordinary member.From the perspective of leaders, FPCs should increase the intensity of training, for theimproving professional skills and management capabilities of leaders, and set the positions ofthe professional managers in FPCs.From the perspective of customers and suppliers, FPCs should develop high-valuecustomer to improve the competitiveness of the cooperatives, improve customer managementcapabilities, and carry out the diversification and take full advantage of the competitivesituation of the supplier, in order to win more favorable policy for FPCs agricultural materialssupply and quality of prenatal services. Meanwhile, for the government, work for FPCsincludes the "appropriate" position,"moderate" management "timely" service and "moderate"support, which are the entire contents of service from governments.