Cooperatives: governance and accountability systems for a better world?

To date, there are few general studies on cooperatives, with some being empirical, practical or issue-driven (Tchami, 2007 ) whilst others are very specialised (Gouil, 2010 ; Jaumier, 2016 ; Jaumier et al., 2012 ; Joannidès, 2013 ). In most cases, most studies focus on a particular type of organisation, generally farmers\u27 cooperatives (Deroy and Thénot, 2012 ; Thénot, 2011 ; vanPeursem et al., 2016 ). Considering cooperatives as case studies often leads to empirical discussions of particular industries or countries, but rarely leads to a conceptualisation of the issues that affect the cooperative form (Béziaud, 2012 ; Diaz, 2012 ; Filippi, 2012 ; Fortin, 2012 ; Salgado, 2012 ; Zhang and Mu, 2012 ). Apart from a growing number of publications in French, Spanish and Portuguese, only Organization has devoted a special issue to cooperatives