Governance Structure,behaviours And Performance Of Apple Growers' Cooperatives In China

China is in the process of agricultural transformation and development.Innovation of agricultural management system,especially in the cooperative as the carrier,to promote the formation of farmers vertical cooperation,horizontal cooperation mechanism,cultivate new agricultural management,is the important way to expand the scale of agricultural management,optimize the agricultural organization structure,improve agricultural production efficiency and comprehensive competitiveness.Relative to grain and other bulk agricultural products,the apple as a high-value agricultural products,its market competition is more fully,facing higher natural risks and market risks.Therefore,small-scale farmers also need cooperatives to avoid risks,thereby increasing their income,and Apple cooperatives is an important way to increase the income of apple growers and improve the level of apple industrialization.Since the promulgation of the Law on Farmers' Specialized Cooperatives of the People's Republic of China in 2007,the development of cooperatives has shown a rapid expansion,but there is the irrational design of property right structure and governance structure,the overall operation quality is not high.The conflict between the number of cooperatives increasing fast and the running quality enhance the lag behind is prominent.In particular,the problem of governance anomie in the process of cooperatives,the ability of cooperatives to serve the needs of members,and the ability to promote the development of members is difficult to improve.Therefore,the governance problem has become a bottleneck restricting the sustainable development of cooperatives,and has become an important issue in government academic circles.On the basis of the existing research results,this paper takes the apple cooperatives as the case study,constructs the management system of apple cooperatives according to the governance structure,governance behavior and governance performance of apple cooperatives.Based on the descriptive statistical analysis,case analysis and econometric analysis,the data of apple cooperatives in five provinces which are located in Bohai Bay and Loess Plateau,the governance structure,governance behavior and governance performance of apple cooperatives were analyzed and measured,then revealing problems and causes,and to provide a theoretical and empirical basis for optimizing the governance structure and improving the governance performance of apple cooperatives.According to the logical structure of "governance structure-governance behavior-governance performance",the research content and chapter arrangement plan are divided into four parts:The first part is the introduction,including the first chapter.Based on the situation of cooperatives,the joint theory and practical problems to be solved,the research background,the purpose of the research and the significance of the research are expounded.On the basis of reviewing and evaluating the relevant literatures and the theory of organizational governance,this paper designs the research program which includes the research ideas(technical route),the main research methods and the key points of the paper areas and content,as well as possible innovation of the paper.The second part is the analysis of apple cooperative governance theory,including the second chapter and the third chapter.On the basis of apple cooperatives research and taking governance structure,governance behaviors and governance performance as the research target,this paper analyzes the connotation,extension and the characteristics of apple cooperatives,identifies the basic types of cooperatives and reveals the main determinants of apple cooperatives governance.Apple cooperative governance theory is constructed by principle-agent theory,stakeholder theory,transaction cost theory and property right theory.This paper analyzes the governance problems and causes of apple cooperatives from the aspects of governance structure,governance behavior and governance performance,and lays the theoretical foundation for the follow-up research.Based on the theory of apple cooperative governance,the author uses descriptive statistical analysis to find out that there is a lack of normative performance in the management of apple cooperatives in our country at present,the ownership is highly concentrated,the functions of members,councils and supervisors are missing or not perfect,as well as democratic management,democratic decision-making formalization,and the government's current support policies,regulatory measures are difficult to correct these problems effectively.The third part is the empirical analysis of the governance structure,governance behavior and governance performance of apple cooperatives,including Chapter 4,Chapter 5,Chapter 6,Chapter 7.The fourth chapter analyzes two cooperative governance structure modes,namely "General Assembly-the Council" and "Ordinary members-Core members-the Council" with the field survey data in the framework of principal-agent theory.Specifically,this chapter analyzes the operation process and the governance situation of two modes using the case from apple growers' cooperatives.The fifth chapter analyzes the distribution of benefits cooperative behavior,decision-making behavior,monitoring behavior,ownership structure and control structure,by using structural equation model to analyze the behavior characteristics of apple cooperatives governance.In the sixth chapter,based on the theory of planned behavior,this paper constructs the analysis framework of 273 farmers' research in Shandong,Henan,Shaanxi and Gansu provinces.The Bivariate Probit model is used to analyze the behavior characteristics,the change of members' income,the trust relationship between members and cooperatives,the characteristics of family members and personal characteristics of members,then explore the main factors influencing members' participation in cooperative governance.The seventh chapter uses the field survey data of 101 apple cooperatives in three provinces of China's apple dominant area.On the basis of the analysis of cooperatives governance performance,the paper measures the governance performance of apple cooperatives by using factor analysis method,and uses the multiple linear regression model and the SUR regression model to analyze the factors influencing the governance performance of apple cooperatives.The forth part is conclusion and discussion,including chapter 8.This part mainly make three espects of comparative analysis,concise the main conclusions of this paper,then identify and confirm the innovation.The main conclusions of this paper are as follows:1.By parsing process running of two structural mode of governance,comparative analysis,"General Assembly-the Council" and "Ordinary members-Core members-the Council" mode of governance structure are analyzed comparatively.We found the members of participation in cooperative governance of former mode has the high level and has the advantage in the aspects of saving management and market transaction costs.The reasons for this include three aspects which are differences in the motives of the members based on the two governance structures,the different demands of interests,the different logical framework of the principal-agent relationship,the existence of significant information asymmetry among members,as well as the difference of market transaction cost.2.Interest allocation behavior is studied on the basis of ownership structure and governance structure.Interest allocation behavior has a significant impact on decision-making behavior supervision behavior,ownership structure and control structure of apple cooperatives.The reasons for the deep structure are: Firstly,the allocation of power structure and decision-making behavior related to the cooperative management of democratic management principles and business strategy formulation,a reasonable distribution of benefits is conducive to promoting the Council members and directors of the cooperative business management activities,and promote members participate in the enthusiasm and depth of cooperative governance,so as to promote the democratic management of cooperative.Secondly,the cooperative organization as a vulnerable group of self-organization,its supervisory behavior is an important aspect of promoting the effective operation of cooperatives.The distribution of benefits determines the members,especially members of the board of supervisors can regulate their duties,thereby significantly reducing the cooperative management of opportunistic behavior tendencies.Thirdly,the decision way of benefits distribution is more concentrated in the hands of a few members of the Council,the profit sharing arrangement is more likely demutualization,cooperative ownership structure is also more concentrated,but seriously affect the rights of small share members.Fourthly,in the process of setting up the apple cooperatives,the members' interest demand of the General Assembly,the board of directors,the board of supervisors and managers play a key role.The number of meetings of the General Assembly,the Council and the board of supervisors also have a significant impact on the normative,rationality and fairness of interest distribution of cooperatives.Members are an important part of the governance structure of the cooperative and the operating carrier of the governance mechanism.The study shows that the greater the probability that the members will sell their apples to cooperatives,the higher the positions in the cooperatives,the higher the enthusiasm for participating in cooperatives.The election of the cooperatives council and the board of supervisors in accordance with the norms and transparent procedures also has a significant positive impact for members to participate in cooperative governance.And cooperatives to provide apple's market services and technical training services has a negative impact on members of participating in cooperative governance;The reduction of the average production cost of cooperative members and fair profit can help to improve the enthusiasm of members to participate in cooperative governance;The greater the probability of cooperatives signed contract between members and cooperative,the higher the degree of their participation in the cooperative governance;The members who has a village cadres or the management background of cooperative have deeper participation in cooperative governance.3.Using factor analysis to measure the governance performance index of cooperatives,the paper analyzes the governance performance of cooperatives and its influencing factors.The results show that governance structure performance and governance bihaviors performance make the most contribution for governance performance of apple cooperative and the overall performance of apple cooperatives is low,but the performance of apple cooperatives in Shaanxi is higher than that in Shandong and Shanxi.The small-scale cooperatives of the council have higher governance performance level,especially the organization performance of cooperative.Which means that China's cooperatives are in the stage of transition from primary to mature.The size of the council is small,which can reduce the organization cost of cooperatives and ensure that the cooperatives have strong environmental applicability and organizational structure flexibility.The financial public measure is not conducive to improving the cooperative governance performance,which means that at this stage with the apple cooperatives' governance structure of the financial management is not standardized,and thus paying attention to improving the financial management of the normative has practical significance to improve the governance performance of apple cooperative;Hiring professional managers can help improve the governance performance of cooperative,Which is helpful to improve the performance of governance behavior and the performance of organization scale.However,it is limited by the capital factor,and the proportion of cooperative managers who employ professional managers is low.Therefore,it is the key to improve the performance of cooperatives by promoting the expansion of cooperatives and creating professional managers' growth environment;A certain proportion of the surplus return and share dividend can help improve the active participation of the members of the cooperative governance,but at this stage need to balance the relationship between the development of cooperative self-organization and membership incentives.When the cooperative strength is weak,the higher surplus return and share dividends make the cooperatives for the development of capital reduction,it is not conducive to improving the cooperative governance performance;The freedom exiting of members is conducive to improving the governance performance of cooperatives;The higher demonstration level of cooperatives has the higher management level,it is more conducive to improving the governance performance of cooperative,in particular,to improve the organization scale performance and external environmental performance.