Cooperative Principles in Practice: Experiences of Serbia

Cooperative principles represent one of the three elements of cooperative identity. In their current form, they have existed since 1995, when they were adopted by the International Cooperative Alliance, and they represent a recommendation to cooperatives around the world on how to organize their business. Adherence to these recommendations in everyday business practice of cooperatives is extremely challenging. In fact, there is a consensus in the literature that deviation from cooperative principles is inevitable. The paper analyzes the experiences of the Republic of Serbia in the implementation of cooperative principles from time of the first cooperatives until today, with special emphasis on agricultural cooperatives. The aim of this paper is to examine the extent to which cooperative principles are respected in the business of cooperatives in Serbia, what factors led to deviations from these recommendations and what consequences this had on the success of these organizations. The paper presents a synergy of theoretical consideration of the problem and examination of experiences of agricultural cooperatives in Serbia in the implementation of cooperative principles. Conducted research indicate that during the development of cooperatives, different levels of deviations from cooperative principles in the practice of agricultural cooperatives were recorded, from very mild to extremely significant deviations that led to the suppression of true cooperative nature. Modern cooperative practice in Serbia is marked by a low level of knowledge of the elements of cooperative identity by the members and management of cooperatives, which further stipulates the posibility of their implementation in practice.