| As democratically owned alliance organizations that are voluntarily formed by farmers,farmers’ cooperatives have made important contributions to the development of agricultural industry in many countries.They have become a key subject to promote modern agricultural development and rural revitalization in China.Unlike ordinary enterprises,farmers’ cooperatives are mainly owned,managed and patronized by their members,which makes their members’ organizational commitment to play a more important role in their development.Theoretical research shows that members’ organizational commitment is the key to the formation and successful development of cooperatives.However,with the continuous development and growth of farmers’ cooperatives,member heterogeneity increases day by day,which weakens members’ organizational commitment and restricts the healthy development of farmers’ cooperatives.In China,affected by the serious rural-household differentiation,Chinese farmers’ cooperatives are born with strong member heterogeneity and face more serious members’ organizational commitment problems.How to effectively strengthen members’ organizational commitment has become an important problem to be solved.The governance mode of the relationship between farmers’ cooperatives and their members directly determines the interests and relationship quality of both sides,which has an important impact on members’ organizational commitment.However,existing researches mainly investigate the influence of governance structure and members’ governance participation on members’ organizational commitment based on corporate governance theory and pay less attention to the effect of relational governance based on informal institutional arrangements.In addition,most of researches take Western cooperatives as research objects and mainly uses theoretical analysis methods to study from a general perspective,which relatively ignore the influence differences of different types of farmers’ cooperatives,especially farmers’ cooperatives in the Oriental cultural context.Chinese farmers’ cooperatives show diversified development in types,but most of them deviate from the essential requirements of the western classic cooperatives of“patron-owners”.A large number of common members only have a trading rather than an ownership relationship with their cooperatives,and the seemingly sound governance structure is in name only.Strong member heterogeneity makes Chinese farmers’ cooperatives fall into a more serious members’ organizational commitment,and their particularity of development makes it difficult to directly apply the cooperative theory in the western context.In view of this,this study bases on the local features of Chinese farmers’ cooperatives,takes alliance transaction governance as the research perspective,build the theoretical analysis framework of “organization type,governance mechanism,and organizational commitment” farmer cooperatives in Chinese context.Then,we used this theoretical analysis framework to explore the relationship among farmers’ cooperatives types,governance mechanism and members’ organizational commitment with the interview survey data of 238 cooperatives from four provinces of China.In this way,this paper aims to expand the related theoretical research of farmers’ cooperatives,alliance governance and organizational commitment,and offer the decision basis and practice guidance for the high quality development of farmers’ cooperatives.Specifically,the main research contents and findings are shown in the following:(1)Relationship analysis between types of farmers’ cooperatives and cooperatives’ governance mechanism.The research results show that the types of industrialization management organizations with farmers’ cooperatives as the link can be divided into original cooperatives,company-affiliated cooperatives and company-led cooperatives.There is a significant difference in the degree of contractual governance between different types of cooperatives,but the level of relational governance is relatively similar.The degree of application of contractual governance in company-led cooperatives,company-affiliated cooperatives and original cooperatives decreases successively,but there is no significant difference in the application of relational governance in these three types of farmers’ cooperatives.Further analysis also found that the quality control intensity and residual settlement incentive of contractual governance are also significantly weakened in the order of company-led cooperatives,company-affiliated cooperatives and original cooperatives,there is also no significant differences in the use of communication and reputation of relational governance in these three kinds of cooperatives,but the trust level in original cooperative is significantly lower than that in company-affiliated cooperatives.(2)Relationship analysis among contractual governance,relational governance and members’ organizational commitment.Results indicate that contractual governance and relational governance have complementary rather than substitute relationships.Contractual governance not only has a direct positive impact on members’ organizational commitment,but also can indirectly enhance members’ organizational commitment by promoting relational governance.Further examination shows that the positive relationship between quality control intensity and relational governance is not significant,and contractual governance mainly promotes relational governance by residual settlement incentive.The quality control intensity,residual settlement incentive,trust and reputation can significantly promote the members’ continuance commitment and members’ affective commitment.Communication can significantly enhance members’ affective commitment,but it does not affect members’ affective commitment significantly.Relational governance plays a moderate effect between residual settlement incentive and members’ organizational commitment.(3)Whether and how the relationship between the governance mechanism and members’ organizational commitment varies with types of farmers’ cooperatives.This study uses farmers’ cooperatives type as a moderate variable to conduct grouping regression.Results reveal that in addition to the relationship between contractual governance members’ and organizational commitment in company-led cooperatives,contractual governance and relational governance in these three types of cooperative can significantly promote members’ continuance commitment and members’ affective commitment.Farmers’ cooperatives types play a moderating role in the relationship between contractual governance and members;organizational commitment and the relationship between relational governance and members’ organizational commitment.Compared with the original cooperatives,the contractual governance of company-affiliated cooperatives has a stronger promotion effect on members’ organizational commitment.The positive effects of relational governance on members’ organizational commitment are weakened in the company-led cooperatives,original cooperatives and company-affiliated cooperatives.Based on the above theoretical analysis and empirical research,this study mainly made the following theoretical and practical contributions: First,this paper explore the effect of governance mechanism on members’ organizational commitment by using social exchange theory,which makes up for the deficiency of the existing research on influencing factors of members’ organizational commitment and provides intellectual support for cooperatives to effectively enhance their members’ organizational commitment.Second,this study divides cooperative governance mechanism into contractual governance and relational governance based on the alliance transaction governance perspectives and identifies their measurement method to conduct empirical test,and also reveals the complementary relationship between contractual governance and relational governance in the context of Chinese cooperatives.On this way,this study has enriched and developed the related theoretical researches of alliance governance and cooperative development;and promotes the understanding and application of farmers’ cooperatives governance mechanism by government and managers.Third,this study classifies farmers’ cooperatives types reasonablely based on Chinese farmers’ cooperative features,and confirmed that the choice of governance mechanism and its relationship with members’ organizational commitment will show significant differences due to different organizational types.On this way,this paper provides practice guidance for optimization of governance mechanism and members’ organizational commitment at the same time. |
