Reasons Why Japanese Small Businesses Form Cooperatives: An Exploratory Study of Three Successful Cases
通过三个成功案例，探索日本小企业为何放弃部分自主权组建合作社，发现资源获取、环境不确定性和外部压力是主要原因，对理解小企业合作行为有参考价值。
REASONS WHY JAPANESE SMALL BUSINESSES FORM COOPERATIVES: AN EXPLORATORY STUDY OF THREE SUCCESSFUL CASES According to the Japanese Agency for Small- and Medium-Size Enterprises (Chushokigyo-cho 1982) more than 46,000 enterprise cooperatives exist in Japan. Their formation is exempted from the anti-trust law. These cooperatives of small businesses are important in the Japanese business world and even outside of Japan, since over 99 percent of Japan's businesses are small. Small businesses contribute more than 80 percent of total employment (Chushokigyo 1982) and most small businesses are members of cooperatives. Also, many Japanese small businesses are subcontractors to large businesses. The objective of this exploratory study was to determine the sociocultural reasons as to why Japanese small businesses form cooperatives and abandon some of their autonomy. LITERATURE REVIEW Studies on U. S. cooperatives have been limited to agricultural/producer cooperatives, housing cooperatives, fisheries cooperatives, credit unions, and employee or worker-owned organizations, many of which are cooperatives of individual producers, workers, or consumers rather than cooperatives of firms. (2) Thus, very little is known about enterprise cooperatives of manufacturing firms, non-agricultural wholesale/retail firms, or service firms. The members of enterprise cooperatives in Japan are small firms engaged in manufacturing, wholesale, retail, or service businesses. It is important to note that members of these cooperatives are not individuals. Instead, the cooperative members are small business firms which continue to maintain their own management and ownerships, and furthermore these firms are not employee-owned. It should also be noted that the member firms existed before the formation of a cooperative. Each member firm is free to withdraw from the cooperative whenever it so desires. Furthermore, these cooperatives are not joint ventures or the product of mergers. Studies of business firms have been largely limited to those with vertical linkages between businesses and horizontal ties established through interlocking boards of directors, mergers, and joint ventures (Whetten 1987). After an extensive review of past studies on interorganizational relationships, Galaskiewicz (1985) concluded that the overriding reason for a firm to form interorganizational linkages is resource procurement in order to ensure its own survival. In addition to resource dependency, Aldrich (1978) suggested that socioeconomic environmental uncertainty motivates interorganizational linkages. While both resource procurement and environmental uncertainty concerns are directly tied to organizational needs, external forces such as pressure from other organizations have been recognized in the literature as another factor that fosters linkages (Aldrich 1979, Hall et al. 1977, Schmidt and Kochan 1977). However, Galaskiewicz (1985) observed that only scant attention has been paid by researchers to groupings of horizontally independent organizations. Enterprise cooperative formation is an example of such grouping. This literature review provides some insight as to why interorganizational linkages are formed, even though no previous studies exist which pertain to the type of enterprise cooperatives found in Japan, so that we might be able to use such knowledge as a conceptual guideline in the examination of our data. We will see if any of the reasons stated in the literature (resource dependency, socioeconomic environmental uncertainty, and external forces) might also apply to Japanese small firms' decision to join a cooperative. JAPANESE SMALL BUSINESS COOPERATIVES The type of cooperatives studied here is called kyodokumiai. The Japanese government promotes this systesm for small businesses in order to strengthen them by providing loans, legal guidance, and exemption from the application of anti-trust laws. …