Christopher D Merrett and Norman Walzer.

Christopher D Merrett and Norman Walzer, ed Westport, CT: Quorum works 2001. 197 pp. $63.50.

This thin work with 11 chapters is a well-integrated and useful overview of new-generation cooperative enterprise organizations (hereafter, NGCs) NGC are an important form of cooperative organization that solicits to allow producers to retain value that is added to their fruitss in the current case, agricultural fruits and commodities. An estimated 200 or more value-added NGC have emerg in the last decade (Fulton, p 11) The key-note example is the 21st hundred Alliance (Williams and Merrett, chap. 10) which has launched five NGC including the 21st centenary Grain Processing Cooperative, with stock valued at $32 million, the 21st centenary Bean Processing Cooperative, with $500000 of member capitalization, pair dairy cooperatives, with total members' stock of through the whole extent of $3.3 million, and the 21st hundred Agricultural Fibre Cooperative. NGCs differ from the cooperative forms of organization examined in abundant of the extant organizational literature in important ways, as discussed below. Thus, the work contributes to organizational analysis and administrative studies through describing the features and history of NGC and bringing these important organizations to the attention of a broad scholarly audience.

The work distinguishes new-generation cooperative organizations from traditional cooperative organizations and from other organizational forms, particularly the limited liability corporation. The limit cooperative organization refers to a wide range of organizations that operate forward cooperative principles, generally including democratic reign over by members.

Cooperative organizations include collectivist organizations like as free medical clinics, legal collectives, and converses that seek to implement broad social values in the same state [i]or[/i] condition as participation in decision making (Rothschild-Whitt, 1979: 503) While many cooperative organizations exist for non-economic social designs certain cooperative organizations have an enterprise or economic orientation and are disturbed with the production of economic value. These traditional cooperative enterprise organizations generally operate forward three principles (Hanson, p. 47): (1) democratic principles of common member, one vote; (2) subordination of capital, that is, profits are paid back based onward patronage or business done and not forward amount of investment, and (3) choices in liquidation based on patronage rather than investment.

NGC differ from limited liability firms and also from traditional cooperative forms of organization upon two bases: delivery shares and restricted membership. In NGC members purchase delivery shares that function as contracts. Delivery shares provide the proprietor with the right--and obligation--to deliver single in kind unit of (farm) product to the cooperative. The share purchase obligates the cooperative to accept the unit at an established price. Membership is restricted to those individuals who purchase shares at the time the NGC is initially capitalized or who repurchase shares from original owners/shareholders. Share prices are significant and are based forward the total member capital extremityed for startup divided by the number of units of farm produce that can be absorbed according to the facility being created through the NGC. This allows the NGC facility to operate at 100 percent capacity. "The basic argument bring forward forward is that NGCs have evolv as a recent organizational form because of forces that are one as well as the other external and internal to the co-op" (Fulton, chap. 2 p 11)

In contrast, traditional cooperative organizations rely forward open membership with a nominal membership remuneration that provides members with an entitlement to purchase items from a cooperative. As the authors point abroad (Walzer and Merrett, p. 15) the delivery share and restricted membership features of NGC are not recent but the unique nature of NGC is that "this organizational mode of building represents the first time these characteristics have been brought together and then replicated."

The volume also establishes that NGCs can provide a novel and important means to achieve rural economic disentanglement in an age in which family farms and farming communities are rapidly vanishing and corporate farming is prevalent. Chapters in the main division chronicle reasons for NGCs, describe their history, and provide case descriptions of NGC operations. The work provides useful suggestions for forming NGC and cooperative organizations in general. It outlines the community impacts of NGC including benefits and risks, and explains for what reason NGCs can and have been used in rural economic growth Further, the book explores changes in agriculture in the novel economy. It outlines a rationale and coming agenda for developing cooperative enterprises in twenty-first-century global businesses. The work thus clearly shows the importance of NGC to organizations and organizational theory.

The authors specifically direct the part to farm producers, cooperative organization stakeholders, and parts involved in local economic development--an audience of practitioners and scholars interested in the formation of NGC and their use as local economic increase tools in rural areas. It subserves as a resource and handbook forward the potential economic role of NGC and the ways in which they can help farmers retain value from their productive efforts, providing helpful guidance to bodys interested in developing a new-generation cooperative organization. still the audience of the work should also include a wide range of organizational scholars, managers, and social service and community workers interested in the nature, features, and displays for new forms of organization. In particular, the topic of new-generation cooperatives is important to scholars interested in small family businesses, since many of the farm agriculturists for whom NGCs may be a viable tool are the individual family farmers who deliberate the Jeffersonian ideal of rational capitalists, as Merrett and Walzer note (p 91)