Research On The Relationship Governance And Contract Governance Mechanism Of Farmers' Professional Cooperatives Under The Situation Of Member Heterogeneity

Farmers' professional cooperatives play an important role in promoting farmers'income,agricultural efficiency and rural development.In 2007,the law of the People's Republic of China on farmers' professional cooperatives was promulgated,and since then,farmers' professional cooperatives have developed rapidly,and the number of farmers joining the cooperatives has increased year by year.Not in harmony with the rapid growth of cooperatives' number,cooperatives' governance problems have been highlighted.This is mainly reflected in the fact that with the expansion and development of cooperatives,the member heterogeneity of cooperatives and the contradictions among members are increasing.Core members have resource superiority,who are the important dependencies of cooperatives in developing.The population base of ordinary members is large,who are important guarantees of stabling cooperatives' membership basis.Both play an extremely important role in the development of the cooperatives.In order to achieve healthy growth and sustainable development,cooperatives must coordinate the governance problems to core members and ordinary members.Otherwise,it will easily lead to problems such as principal-agent problems,hitchhiking and collective action difficulties.There are a lot of research on the problem of cooperatives' governance,and some scholars also consider the relationship governance and contract governance.However,much existing literature has single analysis of one kind of governance mechanism,and pay little attention to the contract governance and relationship governance of cooperatives at the same time.In order to enrich the research on the governance of farmers' professional cooperatives and help to solve the problem of cooperatives' governance,this paper draws on the existing research,combining with the theory analysis and case examples,based on transaction cost analysis framework of the asset specificity,transaction frequency and uncertainty,this paper analyzes the governance logic of cooperatives to core members and ordinary members,and further analyzes the transformation mechanism of contract governance and relationship governance in the developing process of cooperatives.Finally,typical cases are selected to demonstrate and analyze the theoretical analysis part,so as to clarify the governance logic of cooperatives in real life and enhance the persuasiveness of theoretical analysis.Research results show that with the development of cooperatives,the contract governance' intensity of cooperatives to core members and ordinary members will show an increasing trend,but for different members,the relationship governance'intensity will show opposite changes in the growth stages of cooperatives.From the early stage of growth to the later stage of growth of cooperatives,the relationship governance' intensity of cooperatives to ordinary members is gradually enhanced,and the relationship governance' intensity of cooperatives to core members has gradually weakened.This difference is mainly due to the development needs of cooperatives at different stages and the characteristics of heterogeneous members and their relative importance to cooperatives:When the development stage of the cooperatives is closer to the early stage of growth,the lack of cooperatives' production resources makes core members of more scarce resources more valuable and important to the cooperatives than ordinary members.Therefore,the cooperatives pay more attention to the construction of the relationship with core members,and the intensity of the relationship governance to core members is higher than that to ordinary members.When the development stage of cooperatives is closer to the later stage of growth,the need for cooperatives to consolidate member foundations has increased the relative importance of ordinary members.The intensity of the cooperatives' relationship governance to ordinary members will also be enhanced.In terms of the overall governance of cooperatives,with the development of cooperatives,the cost of contract governance will continue to decline with the improvement of the system construction,and the cost of relationship governance will rise with the desalination of human feelings and the dilution of trust.Therefore,the cost of contract governance will continue to decline with the expansion of cooperatives' scale,while the cost of relationship governance is just opposite.Therefore,when the development stage of cooperatives is closer to the initial stage,it is more suitable for cooperatives to use relational governance mechanism,and when the development stage of cooperatives is closer to maturity stage,it is more suitable for cooperatives to use contract governance mechanism.In view of the conclusion of the study,some policy suggestions are put forward in this paper:First,perfect the external environment of cooperatives' development;second,give consideration to efficiency and fairness according to specific situation;third,strengthen the incentive mechanism and supervision mechanism of cooperatives;fourth,strengthen the role of trust,reputation and other mechanisms of cooperatives.