This paper questions the designation of cooperatives as hybrids of market and hierarchy on the grounds that cooperatives possess more differences from these governance mechanisms than commonalities with them. It is argued that the definition of a governance mechanism’s hybridity depends...

This article uses the farm problem theory as the framework for a comparative analysis of cooperative, market and hierarchical organization in the agrifood system. In order to carry out this analysis, the article proposes the organizational economics approach to the farm problem which supplements...