Refocusing on Territory: A Strategic Weapon Against Isomorphism for Banking Cooperatives

This study aims to understand how a banking cooperative developing in a globalized industry achieves territorial strategic positioning in the context of growth through an extraterritorial merger. Theoretically, this study challenges the seemingly accepted assertion that a cooperative drifts into a sectoral competitive logic in its growth, which is contrary to its original territorial logic of action. This article concludes that studies have failed to address the question of how these logics can be reconciled. Therefore, this article adopts a strategic management theoretical perspective to investigate the organizational arrangements of a large cooperative banking group embarking on a major extraterritorial merger strategy. We show that far from being an obstacle to growth, territorial logic plays a central role in defining the new group strategy and its restructuring for economic sustainability. We also show that many organizational processes in a growth context involve co-construction and co-management with local partners. These modes of operation form a bulwark against the isomorphism potential drift that threatens any large financial cooperative in a growth context. More generally, our research calls for a reterritorializing of the field study on the strategic management of cooperatives.