Study On The Social Responsibility Of Farmers’ Cooperatives In Less Developed Areas

With the profoundly adjustment of the population structure, the employment structure and the social structure, there has been formed a new agricultural management system which be represented by the large famer-households, the family farms, the famers’ cooperatives and the leading enterprises of agricultural industrialization. However, in order to pursuing the maximization of profit, both of the large famer-households and the family farms are taking family as operating units. The leading enterprises is difficult to give consideration to more things like the fundamental interests of the farmers on account of the operation guide of which profit is higher than social responsibility, at the same time, the famers’ cooperatives of course assume social responsibility of condensing farmers and guaranteeing the famers’ economic interests as an operating organization which assembled voluntarily by famers. Since The Famers’ Cooperatives Low of the People’s Republic of China has been issued, the famers’ cooperatives developed quickly, which played an important role of the development of agriculture and rural economic. Quantity of the famers’ cooperatives in underdevelopment areas growing obviously, but the factors of low level of economic development, narrow industrial bases, wake market growth degree, detrimental environment conditions and lacking of money and so on, which results in most of the famers’ cooperatives still in a growth stage of cooperation as well as specification, meanwhile, quite number of people are strongly dependent on agriculture because of the lagging of development level of second industry, third industry and urbanization, and the lacking of Vocational skills and ability of adjustment to city of famers, which lead blindness and unsteadiness of non-agricultural employment. There out, the famers’ cooperatives in underdevelopment areas take a significant role in promoting farmers’ incoming, changing agricultural development pattern, pushing comprehensive development of Regional Economy, which is particularly important in assuming social responsibility.In this paper, the necessity of social responsibility of the famers’ cooperatives was analyzed from the cooperatives’ double attribute of sociality and economy; the legitimacy of the farmers’ cooperatives in assuming social responsibility was demonstrated from three aspects which is the sociality and economy of the cooperatives, stakeholders’ benefit protection requirements, the principle norm of International Co-operative Alliance; argued the urgency of assuming social responsibility of the famers’ cooperatives from three sides which includes the fundamentality of agriculture, the particularity of the cooperatives’ social responsibility in under-developed areas, the enterprises’ myopic behavior which caused the benefit lost. Based on stakeholder theory and spill-over effect theory, preliminary identifying the responsibility accounting object of the farmers’ cooperatives in under-developed areas as manager, members, consumers, government and there host communities. During the measure of the cooperatives’ social responsibility assuming, the paper built social responsibility evaluation index system by choosing 19 indexes from the connotation of the cooperatives firstly according to principle of comprehensiveness, scientific and operability. The paper adapted entropy evaluation method of objective empowerment, which comes to that it shows a strong contribution to social responsibility aggregate level to manager and members, a weaker contribution to comprehensive performance aggregate level to social responsibility of community, and the lowest contribution to social responsibility aggregate level to government and consumers. Then, the paper applying synthetic index method get the fulfillment extent of social responsibility of Gansu famers’ cooperatives, which reads the fulfillment extent of social responsibility of Gansu famers’ cooperatives is lower integrally by contrast, as the reason for it shows three aspects: firstly, there are grave shortage of social responsibility understanding of the famers’ cooperatives itself; secondly, the farmers’ cooperatives’ standardization extent is not high; thirdly, there are severe ignorance to profit in host community.In the end, the paper shows that scale of the cooperatives, normative extent of the cooperatives, and situation of fund operation of the cooperatives as well as development of regional economy and so on, which deeply influence social responsibility performance of the regional cooperatives in underdeveloped areas by the way of analyzing the influence factors of social responsibility performance of the famers’ cooperatives. Managers’ education and age as well of cooperatives, year of cooperatives, government intervention, and support fund from government to cooperatives didn’t show strong influence to cooperatives’ social responsibility performance. In accordance with the research conclusion, the paper puts forward the following policy suggestions: first, to regularize development of cooperatives, and empower its consciousness of social responsibility; second, increase transparency of policies, to execute benefiting-farmers policies; third, give proper guidance and encouragement, both government and the public supervise pearly; forth, reduce government intervention, to bring cooperatives subjective initiative into play.