Housing Co-operatives' Networks in Germany: Performance Enhancing through Hybrid Forms of Organization

Housing co-operatives are an important supplier of housing in Germany. It can be noted recently that these medium-sized companies owned by private members enforce networking in the form of intercorporate cooperation with the objective of enhancing their performance. Unlike in banking ñ where co-operative alliances result usually in an hierarchic form of unified governance caused by mergers ñ this is not common in the German housing industry. Housing cooperatives rather try to retain their independence by using networks as hybrid forms of organization for creating a surplus on their ìmember valueî. This paper discusses the question which form of organization could be an appropriate way for enhancing housing co-operativesí performance. Several factors are deducted which can be considered to determine appropriate forms of cooperation.