La participación democrática: ¿un valor en extinción en las sociedades cooperativas?

The survival of the economic organizations in the present environment demands a very fast power of reaction to operate in a market increasingly big and competitive. The famous globalisation is leading to a modification in the internal structures of enterprises, having a tendency to increase its flexibility to face the new circumstances. Different organizational and financial factors have been introduced in the present legal framework of the co-operative societies with the aim to facilitate its adaptation to the new economical environment. But these tools encourage some speculative behaviour instead of preverving the identity and boosting the effective binding of the members to the actual financial and organical structure. In the light of the new general and regional Spanish legislation, the present paper compares the different distortions of the democratic principle derived from the modifications introduced in the social structure of the co-operative society as well as the participation of certain external creditors in the process of decisions-making.