Cooperativism, as an agent of social innovation, significantly contributes to fostering a dynamic economy and plays a fundamental role in rural areas. Analyses of profitability in cooperatives versus Investor-Owned Firms (IOFs) show disparate results depending on the methodology and indicators used. This disparity of results is largely due to the fact that common indicators are used in the business sphere that do not take into account the duality of investor-supplier members in cooperatives. This paper deals with a comparative analysis of the efficiency and profitability of cooperatives and IOFs, which takes into account the cooperative specificity as far as partner-producer duality is concerned. The populations analyzed are the olive oil producing companies in Andalusia and the methodology used is twofold: DEA, in the case of efficiency, and probit regression for the analysis of profitability. For the latter, a cooperative global profitability indicator has been defined. The results point to a superiority of the cooperatives in terms of both efficiency and overall profitability compared to the IOFs, which denotes a greater capacity to better remunerate the producer, especially in smaller companies. However, this superiority disappears as the cooperative gains dimension. Our findings show that the relative performance of cooperatives and IOFs varies by size. This reality warrants the attention of both society and governments, prompting the need for the development and implementation of public policies aimed at their growth and safeguarding. Additionally, it initiates a pathway for further research into other sectors of activity.

中文翻译：

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全球效率和盈利能力：作为社会创新推动者的合作社与农业食品领域的股份公司


合作主义作为社会创新的推动者，对培育充满活力的经济做出了重大贡献，并在农村地区发挥着基础性作用。对合作社与投资者所有企业 (IOF) 盈利能力的分析显示出不同的结果，具体取决于所使用的方法和指标。这种结果的差异很大程度上是由于商业领域使用的共同指标没有考虑到合作社投资者和供应商成员的双重性。本文对合作社和国际组织的效率和盈利能力进行了比较分析，其中考虑了合作社的特殊性以及合作伙伴与生产者的二元性。分析的群体是安达卢西亚的橄榄油生产公司，使用的方法有双重：DEA（效率）和概率回归（盈利能力分析）。对于后者，已经定义了合作性全球盈利指标。结果表明，与 IOF 相比，合作社在效率和整体盈利能力方面均具有优势，这表明合作社更有能力为生产者提供更好的报酬，尤其是在规模较小的公司中。然而，随着合作规模的扩大，这种优势就会消失。我们的研究结果表明，合作社和 IOF 的相对绩效因规模而异。这一现实值得社会和政府关注，促使需要制定和实施旨在促进其发展和保护的公共政策。此外，它还为其他活动领域的进一步研究开辟了道路。