Research On Function Transformation Of Supply And Marketing Cooperative Under Institutional Change Theory

"The Problems of Agriculture,Rural,Farmers" are the key issues in China’s economic and social development. For a long time, in terms of material communication between urban and rural areas, the market supply ensurance, rural economic development, supply and marketing cooperative played a positive role. However, due to the the national macro-policy changes in the process of historical development, supply and marketing cooperative’s function orientation was changed many times, several transformation of its function didn’t work well because of the constraints of path dependence.Supply and marketing cooperative’s unreasonable system and mechanisms, vigourless operation, weak basic construction, poor service ability and other problems have become more and more serious. Supply and marketing cooperative didn’t play an obvious role in agricultural social service, and has become a "marginalized" vulnerable sector. There is a large gap between "Agriculture,Rural,Farmers" work’s requirements,farmer crowd’s expectations and supply and marketing cooperative does under the new situation. Under the background of comprehensively deepening reform, researching on the difficulties of inadequate function transformation of supply and marketing cooperative, and proposing the realizing route have become more important and urgent.Based on sorting out relevant literature and theory, firstly, this paper defines related concepts of function transformation of supply and marketing cooperative, summarizing the four aspects contained in the supply and marketing cooperative’s function from "should-be" status. It points out that the function transformation of supply and marketing cooperative is led by the central and local government, aiming to restructure and transform the duties and functions of supply and marketing cooperative in participating in social and public affairs management. And it explains the purpose, pattern and direction of function transformation of supply and marketing cooperative. Meanwhile, it summarizes the involved concepts of institutional change theory, types of institutional change and the Path Dependence Theory, analyzing the internal relations between institutional change theory and function transformation of supply and marketing cooperative. Subsequently, it divides the historical process of function transformation of supply and marketing cooperative into four stages, which are initial stage of supply and marketing cooperative’s establishment, incorporated and revocated period, restored period, the comprehensive reform period. Regarding supply and marketing cooperative as an institutional arrangement, it analyzes the changing motivation, pattern, influence, function orientation and function performance of each stage and extracts the underlying factors which affect function transformation of supply and marketing cooperative. Then, based on the review and summarization of function transformation of supply and marketing cooperative in the historical process, it concludes some predicaments of function transformation, including actual work in transformation departed from agricultural services direction, function transformation failed to resolve the problem of administrative tendency or realize deep breakthrough, great difference in the progress of transformation among regions and so on. And according to four starting mechanisms of path dependence, including initial setup cost, learning effect, coordinating effect and adaptive expectation, it analyzes the main factors which impede function transformation of supply and marketing cooperative are restriction of the initial institutional arrangements, influence of interest groups gamble and informal rules restraint. The restriction of the initial institutional arrangements includes initial function orientation’s induction on the direction of transformation, the impact of centralized rule mechanism on the methods of function transformation, the constraint of business management mode on the means selection of function transformation,the hindrance of given institutional environment’s defects to the function transformation and so on; The influence of interest groups gamble includes the hindrance and resistance to the function transformation from vested interests, constraints of different interest groups gambling in transformation subjects to the function transformation, the waver of uncertain expected return to function transformation and so on; The informal rules restraint includes influence of the traditional "official standard" and centralization ideology on function transformation, influence of free ride psychology on local governments’enthusiasm to promote function transformation, insufficient understanding on the importance of function transformation in the society, bad cultural atmosphere of supporting the function transformation of supply and marketing cooperative and so on. Finally, according to the Institutional Change Theory, combined with these factors that hinder function transformation of supply and marketing cooperative, it proposes the route to realize function transformation of supply and marketing cooperative, which mainly includes creating good environment for promoting function transformation of supply and marketing cooperative, integrating interest demands of game subjects of functional transformation of supply and marketing cooperative, breaking informal rules hindrance in function transformation of supply and marketing cooperative. About creating good environment for promoting function transformation of supply and marketing cooperative, we should reasonably enhance the top-level design of the direction of function transformation of supply and marketing cooperative, innovate function transformation mode of supply and marketing cooperative, adopt the means of marketization in function transformation of supply and marketing cooperative, optimize the institutional environment of promoting the function transformation of supply and marketing cooperative; About integrating interest demands of game subjects of functional transformation of supply and marketing cooperative, we should harmonize relations among the vested interest groups in functional transformation of supply and marketing cooperative, guide the subjects of functional transformation of supply and marketing cooperative to reach agreement to promote the function transformation, arouse the enthusiasm of local governments to promote the function transformation of supply and marketing cooperative; About breaking informal rules hindrance in function transformation of supply and marketing cooperative, we should overcome the constraints from traditional thinking in promoting function transformation of supply and marketing cooperative, enhance the positive publicity of function transformation of supply and marketing cooperative, form the culture atmosphere to support function transformation of supply and marketing cooperative.