A Research On The Influence Of Core Members’ Social Capital On The Development Of Farmer Specialized Cooperatives

At the present stage in our country, the connotation of basic contradictions in agricultural economy can be thought as the agricultural industry organization behavior subject and the market, there is a growing survival risk in farmers and leading enterprise. Farmer professional cooperative economic organization is essentially as a market vulnerable group of farmers union, which can improve the systematism degree of farmers and the market competitiveness, avoid market risk, increase the farmers’income and improve agricultural labor productivity, is the effective way to realize Modern Agriculture. However, there are many questions in our Farmer professional cooperative economic organization such as the form is informal, the function is not sound, the cooperation level is low, small scale, the driving ability is weak and so on. In order to protect the interests of the members better, improve the attractive and cohesion of cooperative to members. Meanwhile, With blood and geographical as the personal relationship in rural China, determine the social nature is a "acquaintances society", the logic starting point is the relational orientation which is with the "oneself" as the core of " Differential Pattern " in social environment and it becomes one of the performance of our country’s current rural social capital. The core members can use their good interpersonal network to mobilize more farmers to join cooperatives, which will be Conducive to expanding the scale of cooperatives, and also can use their own social capital to obtain the formal or informal channels of news, which will help decision makers to make decisions, expand marketing channels for agricultural products and improve the operational performance of cooperatives. Therefore, it is essential to measure the social capital of our current cooperatives’core members.This paper analyzes what kind influence the core members’social capital does on the development of planting industry cooperative from the perspective of size, organization characteristics, operation performance and so on, which is helpful to find method and countermeasure to ease or resolve the current development problem of farmers’specialized cooperative economic organization in China. With the principal component analysis and structure equation model, the paper also uses investigation data of Sichuan and Chongqing158planting cooperatives and380core members to deeply analyze the influence that the various core members’ social capital elements does on the development of the cooperative. Finally this paper promotes policy suggestion about improving the core members’social capital to advance the cooperative development.The main conclusion of this paper is as following:(1)There are two ways for core members’social capital to influence the cooperative development. The empirical research shows that, there are two obviously ways for core members’social capital to influence the cooperative development. The first way is that the core members directly influence development of their cooperative through their trust, interpersonal network, the reciprocal benefit and the formal social capital component; The second way is that the core members’social capital component influences the further development of their cooperative through intermediation function of their social capital. Through core members’social capital, make full use of core members’good interpersonal network and other social capital to promote the improvement of the cooperative internal mechanism, expanding the cooperative reasonably and effectively to increase the cooperative operation performance becomes the cooperative development of effective path.(2)The the relationship network society capital of core members significantly and greatly influences the development of the cooperative. After controlling the influence of cooperative operation term and the main industry, the cooperative with more relationship network society capital develops better than the less one. As for the core members, the cooperative relationship network are mainly reflected as the interconnection of different networks classified by public, production, study, research and money of cooperatives interests. The core members’social capital effectiveness is decided by their accessibility, convenience and can switching in the social network, and the good social network can promote complex knowledge and experience sharing and transferring in the cooperative. The effective social network of core members could help the cooperative reduce the links, time, procedures and cost in improving the internal mechanism, expanding the organization and raising operation performance to promote the cooperative rapidly and orderly developing.(3) The stakeholders trust core members that promote the cooperative sustainable development. This paper studies show that, although the core members’trust social capital influences the cooperative development in different ways, the core members’trust social capital have a positive role in expanding cooperative organization, consolidating internal organization mechanism and promoting operation performance. Trust is the most important index for social capital, and the trust based on blood or genetic relationship is completely unable to meet the development of market economy. When people meet in the interpersonal network, there will be many asymmetric information situation, the individual forms the interests, preference, strategy and other equilibrium after long-term and repeatedly gaming in this network, which makes the people cooperative and establish trust between each other. A cooperative is based on mutual trust among the villagers, with the long-term cooperation interests, the peasants and other stakeholders have enthusiasm to perform the entrusted obligation, and fight for good reputation to maintain the trust relationship. Without the trust, cooperative will not exist, the establishment and development of cooperative require high level of trust among members. As the core members, there will be difficult to promote the further development of the cooperative without high credibility and exists a foundational defects in the basic conditions of cooperative development. Therefore, the core members establish the good trust relationship with the cooperative is an important way to promote sustainable development of cooperative.(4) The reciprocal behavior of core members has some stimulative effect for the cooperative development. The empirical research shows that, the reciprocal social capital of core members has little effect for cooperative organization scale and organization characteristics, but has great effect for operation performance. Social capital is generated through the reciprocal behavior. Any individual in the society can’t completely meet all needs, and must need the others’help. But as intentional bodies, they provide help for other people, meanwhile they need to get other people’s help. Therefore in the natural evolution process, the core members’the social emotion trend and cooperation ability make them take reciprocal behavior in interpersonal network. With the mutual cooperation, cooperative members form reciprocity in the development of the cooperative, which can help the core members and ordinary members form common values to promote perfection of the internal mechanism of cooperative. The trust of stakeholders makes different subjects have high expectation, correspondingly, individual will also expend equal obligation in trading content. The core members keep expectation and obligation with stakeholders in the relationship network for maintaining and improving the scale and operation performance of cooperative, which make them have more advantage in the market competition with other groups or individuals.(5) The formal social capital of core members has significant effect on the cooperative development. The empirical research shows that the core members rationally use informal regulations hindered cooperative further expanding in certain extent, which contradicts theoretical hypotheses. And the formal social capital of core members has positive effect on cooperative organization characteristics and operating performance in direct and indirect ways.As to the cooperative, informal regulations are values, rules and restrictions shared between the members or groups, such as customs, faith and so on. In a network existing same regulations, the various stakeholders are connected, but each subject has their own attribute, these individuals with different attributes are connected for the same regulations and mutually dependent on each other. The core members make full use of the informal regulations can help cooperation within cooperative and between cooperative and other organizations, and further improve organization internal management and the form unified organization culture, which is to raise the organization’s operating performance. However, with cooperative constant expanding, folk custom and practice are no longer the main development basis, if core members still almost rely on these informal systems and ignore constructing the internal formal management system, it will hinder cooperative further expanding and the cooperative development.The innovation of this paper is mainly reflected in the following three aspects:(1) The quantitative determination of the social capital of cooperatives’core members. Literature search found, the past researches about the social capital of core members are all qualitative description analysis, but this paper uses field survey data, scientifically makes the measuring index system of the social capital of cooperatives’core members according to the connotation of social capital, which can take Quantitative Determination of the social capital, and calculate the overall index and sub-index of social capital to make a clear and scientific understanding of the social capital of core members.(2)Make a comprehensive analysis of Cooperative development in Sichuan-Chongqing region, reveal the differences between the cooperatives.This paper mainly uses comparative analysis method to analyze the cooperative development situation in different main industry and different set up time horizontally and vertically when it analyzes the status of cooperative development in the Sichuan-Chongqing region, and it has found there exists big difference in cooperative development situation between different main industry and different set up time.(3) Make a comprehensive analysis of the social capital of core members on the influence of the cooperatives, to points out the way and extent that the social capital of core members effecting cooperative.This paper not only analyzes what kind influence the social capital of core members does on the development of cooperatives, but also deeply discusses what kind influence various factors such as trust, relationship network and regulation does on scale, organization characteristic and operation performance of cooperative, and definitely points out the way and extent that total amount and components of social capital influencing cooperative development.