Co-operatives

This chapter explores the strategic response of co-operative management toward globalization and the resulting outcome. It aims to develop the tensions which large-scale co-operatives need to address in the context of global pressures. The chapter discusses how the identified tensions impacted the co-operative sector in Denmark and how it has come to be seen as an important pillar of Danish society. In the field of business history, co-operative business has lived on the margins of scholarly interest. The new wave of studies had a shared core as they discussed the role of co-operatives in previous times and also foregrounded their continued present-day importance in some countries and sectors, thereby stressing that co-operatives had competitive advantages overlooked by mainstream economists. In Denmark the co-operative idea was first tried out in the 1850s based on English and German models. Globalization and competition changed the structure of the co-operatives in Denmark.