Cooperative Norms,Justice Climate And Economic Performance

Agricultural cooperatives are the basic subjects to bring farmers into the market.They are both new entities for the development of rural collective economy and effective carriers for the innovation of rural social management.With the increase of the support of central and local governments on agricultural cooperatives,China's rural cooperative undertakings have been accelerating.However,there are still many problems in the rapid development and expansion of agricultural cooperatives in C hina.O ne of the problems that has been criticized is the fact that cooperatives are not standardized.Agricultural cooperatives not only should serve members,but also should achieve market success.The success of the market means that the cooperatives have better economic performance.Is the normative co-op's economic performance higher? Therefore,this paper will focus on exploring the theoretical relationship between the degree of cooperative norms and the economic performance of cooperatives and to prove it.Due to the lack of uniformed cooperative norms,this paper will draw on the “Interim Measures for the Assessment and Monitoring of National Farmers' Cooperatives”,and extract four aspects as the criterions of cooperative norms,which are democratic management,service effectiveness,product quality and social reputation.Agricultural cooperatives have social attribute,which ask for the pursuit of fairness.Actually,the construction of “democratic management” needs external forces to force the cooperative to maintain fair.Therefore,this paper assumes that organizational justice climate plays an intermediary role in the relationship between democratic management and the economic performance of cooperatives,and constructs a theoretical model through which cooperative norms influence the economic performance of cooperatives.A total of 114 valid questionnaires were obtained through the investigation of 127 agricultural cooperatives in Hubei,Jiangxi and Shandong provinces,and the theoretical model was tested by referring to the intermediate effect test proced ure proposed by Wen Zhonglin et al.Through empirical analysis,research conclusions are obtained.The empirical study shows that the cooperative norms positively affect the economic performance of cooperatives,among which the service effectiveness,product quality and social reputation directly affect the economic performance of the cooperatives,and the democratic management indirectly influences the economic performance of cooperatives through organizational justice climate.Based on the conclusion of the study,this paper puts forward some suggestions on how to participate in the construction of cooperative norms: the government should improve legislation and supervision of relevant laws and regulations of cooperative norms and strengthen the propaganda and popularization of relevant knowledge of cooperatives;the leaders of cooperatives need correctly understand cooperative norms,improve the democratic management and financial management system in accordance with the law,and strengthen the construction of justice climate within cooperatives;members should know and understand the law,take the initiative to claim their rights,and positively innovate to create personal benefits which can bring collective benefits.