A Better Place to Work: Finnish Co-operatives in a Comparative Organizational Climate Analysis

One of the ambiguities of the success of co-operatives is that they, despite the special legal status that several nations have attributed to them, find themselves under increased pressure to demonstrate that their institutional model delivers better services or jobs, or addresses market failures or improves market efficiency. It is with this tension in mind that this paper reflects upon recent changes in working conditions, inter alia indicating how such changes have specifically impacted the experienced reality of cooperatives as good working places. This approach is intended to supplement other research on cooperatives by emphasising the role of organisational climate as a research tool to investigate their working environments compared to traditional firms. Data for this research was gathered by canvassing, through organisational climate questionnaires, the opinions of workers within the selected co-operatives and conventional firms of five countries, using the Finnish case as the key pilot study. The banking and transportation industries formed the focus.