ARE 132: Cooperative Business Enterprises

Final Project: Case Study of Cooperative Business Enterprises

Learning objectives:

This project allows you to apply the material covered throughout the quarter in an analysis of an existing cooperative business or organization of your choice.

An important aspect of successfully completing this project is to identify a business issue or market failure and clearly focus on offering possible solutions. The more specific you are, the easier it will be to complete your project successfully. Throughout your analysis, you are expected to develop an in-depth understanding of the business or organization and think about potential strategies to address your identified issue. I strongly encourage you to reach out to the business or organization you are analyzing and talk to management, members and/or patrons.

Content and Structure:

Your final project should be no longer than 10 pages (double-spaced), and should provide an answer to each of the following seven questions:

1)  What is an issue the business or institution is currently facing?

2) Description of the cooperative (collective or organization).

a) Industry of operation

b) Products and/or services provided

c)   Organizational structure (e.g., who is horizontally coordinating and are they vertically integrating?)

3) What economic conditions (production, market, regulatory) are affecting the cooperative (either its formation or its current operations)?

4) What economic rationale supports the cooperative’s existence (more than one rationale may be relevant)?

5)  How are contemporary cooperative principles demonstrated? (At the minimum, address the three principles defined by the USDA, but you might also refer to the seven principles defined by ICA depending on the business.)?

6)  Has the firm’s cooperative structure (either organizational principles or government regulations) had an adverse impact on the cooperative’s business performance? What are specific management challenges faced and market strategies pursued?

7)  What specific recommendations and suggestions can you give based on your analysis?

Sample Outlines:

Please note that you do not have to follow the structure suggested here and that your headings could either be based on structure or content.

Executive Summary

The Business Issue

Description of the Co-op

Application of Contemporary Principles

Economic Rationale and Insights from the Literature

Business Performance and Challenges Faced

Recommended Strategies

References

or (less detailed but similar content)

Executive Summary

The Business Issue

Analysis

Recommendations

References

We will provide additional guidance and feedback throughout the quarter. Please also ask questions in lecture and reach out during student hours.

Groups:

You will be working on this project in groups of 5-7 students. Groups will be assigned during the second week of instructions.

While I encourage you to assign tasks to each other once you are assigned to groups, each member should be familiar with and contribute to all aspects of this project. That includes reading and editing drafts before submissions.

Deliverables:

You are asked to submit a one-page case study proposal (topic and brief outline) by the end of the third week (Sunday, January 26th) to receive initial feedback.

Your complete case study is due at the beginning of our last lecture (Thursday, March 13).

While you have to upload a pdf version to Canvas, you can also bring a printed version to class that day. A grading rubric and further instructions are posted on Canvas.

Please note that all group members will receive the same grade for the final project. Please reach out if you experience issues in terms of group participation. If a member has not participated   until week 8 of the quarter (Tuesday, February 25) he/she/they can be removed from the group and will have to complete their own project. A 5-point penalty will be applied to individually submitted projects unless an exception or special permission was granted.

Please note that the final project assignment created on Canvas includes a rubric for additional guidance regarding grading guidelines.

We do not prohibit use of GenAI (e.g., ChatGPT and Gemini), but encourage you to be thoughtful and transparent. When carefully checked for accuracy, these tools can enhance your research and scientific writing, but overreliance on AI has been shown to hinder critical reflection and erode expertise. These tools are trained to find patterns and generate text by predicting the likeliest response based on their training data. They do not understand context or create original ideas, and they make a lot of mistakes. While they can help you brainstorm topics and provide basic editorial feedback, they are not a substitute to reviewing the literature yourself, critically reflecting on and continuously editing your writing. For guidance on how to cite your AI use, please see this link. If you are looking to improve your writing, I also encourage you to take advantage of the services offered by the AATC Writing Support Center.

References:

You are free to use academic resources, reports, and websites. Please do not just copy and paste information and be sure to reference all your sources.  You are required to cite a reference even if you rephrase what you have read. That is also true for graphs or tables that you are including, unless you are creating those yourself.

Proper citation: If you are citing an article or other sources in the text, you do not have to write out the title and full author name. Instead, you include the last name and publication year only. If you cite word for word, you will also have to reference the page number as well.

You then include the complete information for all of your references used in the reference section at the end of your paper.

Citation styles vary slightly across academic outlets and other publications in Economics. I do not require that you follow a particular style. as long as you are consistent throughout and include all information to identify and access your source. Please refer to sample references and styles published by AEA (https://www.aeaweb.org/journals/policies/sample-references) for additional guidance.

Cooperative Business Enterprises for your Analysis:

You are free to complete your analysis on any cooperative business or organization. Please check the NCB Co-op 100 list (top 100 cooperatives in America) for a wide variety of businesses.  Below, I also provide a list of cooperative businesses or related organizations I have worked with in the past:

Possible Businesses, Marketing agreements. etc.:

1.   Blue Diamond

2.   BUCRA (Butte County Rice Growers Association)

3.   California Leafy Greens Marketing Agreement (LGMA)

4.   Hass Avocado Board (Marketing Order)

5.   CoBank

6.   Davis Natural Food Co-op

7.   Golden State Power

8.   Land O'Lakes

9.   Full Belly Farm (CSA)

10. LBMX (Purchasing Co-op)

11. Pachamama Coffee (Global Farmer’s Cooperative)

12. Sacramento Natural Food Co-op

13. SunMaid Growers

14. The Cheese Board Collective

15. California Center for Cooperative Development (Non-profit organization supporting a variety of co-ops)