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Constantine Iliopoulos

Constantine Iliopoulos
Agricultural Economics Research Institute (AGRERI)/Hellenic Agricultural Organization - Demeter

PhD
Current research on organizational solutions to pressing issues facing Mediterranean cooperatives (AGRICOMPET/PRIMA)

About

117
Publications
73,041
Reads
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2,307
Citations
Introduction
Dr Constantine Iliopoulos serves as the Director of the Agricultural Economics Research Institute, Athens, Greece. His research program focuses on developing relevant systems-wise conceptual frameworks, diagnostic tools, and solutions addressing the most pressing social dilemmas facing complex organizations and communities in need of synergies and cooperative approaches. He also serves as Associate Editor for Agricultural and Food Economics (Springer).
Additional affiliations
July 2019 - present
Leibniz Institute of Agricultural Development in Transition Economies
Position
  • Fellow
January 2020 - present
Co-opAbility
Position
  • Co-Founder and Senior Member
Description
  • Co-opAbility is an non-profit, non-governmental organization aiming to transform the quantity and quality of cooperation along food netchains by preparing the next generation of cooperative geniuses.
April 2014 - June 2016
Leibniz Institute of Agricultural Development in Transition Economies
Position
  • Researcher
Education
January 1995 - December 1998
University of Missouri
Field of study
  • Agribusiness Economics and Management

Publications

Publications (117)
Article
Full-text available
The recent literature on cooperatives includes two distinct and partly conflicting strands. The moral strand emphasizes cooperatives as a sustainable alternative to shareholder capitalism, while the managerial one problematizes the maintenance organizational costs that must be incurred by these organizations. To reconcile the disparity between thes...
Article
Full-text available
Innovative business models in European agrifood systems: governance issues in an era of digitalization, societal demand and environmental challenges EDITORIAL Maeve Henchion a , In recent time, European agrifood systems are witnessing tremendous changes which affect the way traditional businesses are organized. Among these trends one can recognize...
Article
Full-text available
Purpose Transaction cost economics sees a broad spectrum of governance structures spanned by two types of economic adaptation: autonomous and cooperative. Stakeholder theorists have drawn much inspiration from transaction cost economics but have not paid explicit attention to the centrality of the idea of adaptation in this literature. This study a...
Article
The current paper is motivated from and inspired by Michael L. Cook's seminal contribution to the study of cooperative organizations in agriculture. I delve into the cooperative lifecycle framework introduced by Cook in order to address the issue of cooperative longevity. Despite several organizational design inefficiencies identified in the litera...
Article
Cet article s'inspire de la contribution fondamentale de Michael L. Cook à l'étude des coopératives agricoles, notamment son approche du cycle de vie des coopératives, afin d’aborder la question de leur longévité. Bien que la littérature ait identifié des dysfonctionnements dans leur conception organisationnelle, les données empiriques indiquent qu...
Chapter
The current chapter reviews extant literature on organizational costs incurred by agricultural cooperatives, discusses the importance of these costs, and introduces a novel framework for studying organizational costs in these business enterprises. The framework is based on the observation that when a cooperative is founded, original members are fac...
Book
This incisive Handbook provides a global update on the state of knowledge in cooperatives and mutuals, expertly describing future directions for research and education. Showcasing extensive discussions of cooperative theory, Matthew Elliott and Michael Boland, and the contributors assess cooperatives' social, economic and environmental effects and...
Article
Full-text available
Little is known about the board structures and processes adopted by agricultural cooperatives , particularly in Eastern European countries. We address this substantial knowledge gap by focusing on Estonian agricultural cooperatives. Using survey results from a sample of 23 Estonian agricultural cooperatives, we identify board structures and process...
Article
Full-text available
Short food supply chains (SFSCs) are alternative food chains that have gained ground and contribute to the global food system's sustainable transition. To explore how to enhance their capacity to act and benefit society at large, we turned to scholarly and policy work on Social Innovation (SI). We concentrated on understanding what SI in SFSCs is a...
Conference Paper
This paper describes how managers assess Greek wine co-operatives by answering a survey developed to identify organizational capacity in wine co-operatives. The questionnaire was adapted from Preliminary criteria to evaluate organizational capacity in wine co-operatives, previously developed to Portuguese wine cooperatives. The research question he...
Conference Paper
The study intends to create a better understanding of wine co-operatives and their relationship with the environment using a systemic approach. The paper compares wine co-operatives in Greece and Portugal. The main research question to be answered is: What are the similarities and differences in Greek and Portuguese wine co-operatives from a system...
Article
Full-text available
This study aimed to identify the barriers and facilitators of consumers purchasing from short food supply chains (SFSC). Eight focus groups were conducted with consumers in the rural and urban areas of Germany, Spain, Hungary and Greece. Participants generally felt that increasing the convenience of purchasing SFSC products (in terms of a proximal...
Article
Full-text available
Participation of members, the owners of their organizations, in co-operative governance can be enhanced through continuous education and training. This paper contributes to the empirical literature concerning the contribution of members’ education and training in enhancing good governance in co-operatives. The paper centres on practical experience...
Article
L’hétérogénéité des préférences des membres est devenue un sujet essentiel dans la recherche sur les coopératives, axée sur les coûts organisationnels encourus par les coopératives agricoles. Le présent article passe en revue la littérature existante sur le sujet et expose une nouvelle vision de la gouvernance par les membres associés et contrôlée...
Article
L’hétérogénéité des préférences des membres est devenue un sujet essentiel dans la recherche sur les coopératives, axée sur les coûts organisationnels encourus par les coopératives agricoles. Le présent article passe en revue la littérature existante sur le sujet et expose une nouvelle vision de la gouvernance par les membres associés et contrôlée...
Article
Cooperative organizations are generally capable of accommodating diverse needs of their members. Particularly in today’s agrifood systems, this capacity often makes the governance of cooperatives themselves extraordinarily challenging. To meet some of these challenges, the paper develops a new conceptual approach to cooperative governance by differ...
Presentation
Full-text available
Εν μέσω κρίσης, την περίοδο 2009-2016, ιδρύθηκαν στην Ελλάδα περισσότεροι από 50 αγροτικοί συνεταιρισμοί (Iliopoulos, 2016). Ένας από αυτούς, ο «Συνεταιρισμός – Ομάδα Παραγωγών Αγελαδοτρόφων Γαλακτοπαραγωγής Θεσσαλίας-Πιερίας με δ.τ. ΘΕΣγάλα ΠΙΕς» (ΘΕΣγάλα στο εξής), στηρίχθηκε ιδιαίτερα από τους καταναλωτές και συχνά αναδείχθηκε σε πρωταθλητή των...
Article
Full-text available
In a recent contribution to this journal, Deng et al. (2021) draw on an extensive range of theoretical and empirical literature to make the case for the tendency of social capital resources of agricultural cooperatives in the Western world to decline over time. The present paper revisits this argument by drawing on a Luhmannian systems-theoretic pe...
Presentation
Full-text available
The current paper fills a significant knowledge gap by providing an in-depth study of the organizational design and strategic choices of Estonian agricultural cooperatives. Based on data collected through an online survey and personal interviews of 23 cooperative leaders, we answer three key research questions: Is a board of directors always necess...
Presentation
Full-text available
The paper develops a new conceptual approach exploring how increasing member diversity problems, which negatively affect sustainability of agricultural cooperatives worldwide, can be addressed by cooperative leaders. The key innovation is in introducing the distinction between core and peripheral cooperative activities; core activities are based on...
Presentation
Full-text available
The role and contributions of efficient and effective governance structures, processes and training in agricultural cooperatives. You can attend through this link: http://laukutikls.lv/nozares/uznemejdarbiba/raksti/november-19-live-conference-cooperation-long-term-farming-english
Research
Full-text available
Ο γαλακτοκομικός συνεταιρισμός ΘΕΣγάλα ιδρύθηκε το 2011 με έδρα τη Λάρισα και γρήγορα εισήλθε δυναμικά στην αγορά γάλακτος με καινοτόμες ιδέες. Στηρίχθηκε ιδιαίτερα από τους καταναλωτές και συχνά αναδείχθηκε σε πρωταθλητή των θετικών αναφορών από τον τύπο και τα κοινωνικά μέσα δικτύωσης. Ο ΘΕΣγάλα αναπτύχθηκε ταχέως και επεκτάθηκε στη Θεσσαλονίκη κ...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Agricultural cooperatives have been extremely successful at producing and bringing food to billions of consumers around the world. Arguably, such success is caused by their superb ability to constantly adapt to the changing needs of their members and consumers. They do this by slightly modifying (tinkering) or completely altering (reinventing) thei...
Presentation
Full-text available
Agricultural cooperatives have been extremely successful at producing and bringing food to billions of consumers around the world. Arguably, such success is caused by their superb ability to constantly adapt to the changing needs of their members and consumers. They do this by slightly modifying (tinkering) or completely altering (reinventing) thei...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
According to a recent survey of the Estonian Ministry of Rural Affairs, 113 agricultural cooperatives are currently active in the dairy, cereals, meat, and potato industries of Estonia (Laaneväli et al., 2018). Yet, the small size of these collective entrepreneurship schemes constrains their ability to compete successfully against powerful opponent...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
This paper discusses social innovation conceptualised as the process through which it can contribute to a transformative agri-food system. Research on social innovation in the agri-food system is mainly carried out through case studies. This is due to the unique character of innovations, at least when they emerge, and the fact that the concept of s...
Article
Full-text available
The European milk crisis accentuated the importance of sustainability in the dairy sector. In achieving sustainable rural development, strategies focused on value chain creation, transparency and traceability are crucial. Sustainable relationships are needed to promote these aspects through collective action. This paper uses empirical evidence from...
Conference Paper
The purpose of this paper is to shed new light on the issue of preference heterogeneity in cooperatives. Drawing on the ideas of Habermas and Luhmann, this paper interprets preference heterogeneity of cooperative members in terms of the precarious relationship between the categories of “system” and “lifeworld.” It is argued that the sensitivity of...
Conference Paper
Cooperative scholars acknowledge that there exists a sense in which cooperative organizations are supposed to combine economic and social identities, and in this sense to exhibit “double nature” (Iliopoulos and Valentinov, 2018; 2017). In the history of cooperative thought, the double nature of cooperatives has been prominently elaborated by Georg...
Article
Full-text available
The European milk crisis accentuated the importance of sustainability in the dairy sector. In achieving sustainable rural development, strategies focused on value chain creation, transparency and traceability are crucial. Sustainable relationships are needed to promote these aspects through collective action. This paper uses empirical evidence from...
Article
Full-text available
Despite popular misconceptions, cooperatives present a very successful organizational form worldwide. A recent study found that in the U.S., for example, 134 agricultural cooperatives celebrated their 100th anniversary in 2014. This observation on cooperative longevity is not matched by a corresponding research effort on what makes cooperatives so...
Conference Paper
The objective of this paper is dual. The first is to identify the key factors that characterize the most successful organizational models of firms operating in the Greek wine industry. The second is to verify if the adoption of third party certifications influences the firms performance. In particular, paying attention on the internal resources of...
Article
Full-text available
All over the globe, cooperatives are plagued by pervasive member heterogeneity problems that are induced by the radical and dynamic changes in the business environment. Most current solutions to these problems emphasize strengthening member loyalty and commitment. Yet, many of these solutions are symptomatic rather than fundamental. Searching for f...
Article
Full-text available
The paper is investigating the electronic-based traceability systems (ETsystems) that are considered as a valuable tool for the assurance of food safety and quality, for guaranteeing value added to products and ultimately, for serving the transparency and sustainability of agri-food chains. The objective of this research is to investigate the facto...
Article
Full-text available
Abstract Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to shed new light on the issue of preference heterogeneity in cooperatives. Design/methodology/approach – Drawing on the ideas of Habermas and Luhmann, this paper interprets preference heterogeneity of cooperative members in terms of the precarious relationship between the categories of “system” and...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
On January 9 2017 the European Commission presented the Agricultural Market Task Force Report (AMTF). The report entitled "Improving Market Outcomes-Enhancing The Position of Farmers In the Supply Chain," examines the position of farmers in the supply chain and makes recommendations as to how to improve that position. On contracting the report reco...
Article
Full-text available
This paper examines empirically the relationship between geographical indications and trademarks. While protection via geographical indications (GIs) requires collective investment in time and money by different stakeholders, trademarks can be applied and used by single entities such as individuals and firms. Their interplay however has only been r...
Article
Full-text available
A key challenge internationally is the design of policies that will result in the substitution of conventional energy sources with renewable energy sources. The European Union has set a legally binding target of 20% final energy consumption from renewable sources by 2020 but not all EU countries have been successful in meeting interim targets towar...
Article
Purpose - The purpose of this research is dual. First, it identifies distinct organizational models in a sample of SMEs operating in the Sicilian wine industry. Second, it identifies the key factors enabling a superior export success. Design/methodology/approach – Internal resources were analyzed theoretically in order to achieve the aims of the st...
Article
Purpose - The purpose of this research is dual. First, it identifies distinct organizational models in a sample of SMEs operating in the Sicilian wine industry. Second, it identifies the key factors enabling a superior export success. Design/methodology/approach – Internal resources were analyzed theoretically in order to achieve the aims of the st...
Presentation
Full-text available
My lecture explores and presents the birth and evolution of economic theories of agricultural cooperation. I will focus primarily on significant developments in the theory of the cooperative firm. In the class we will have the opportunity to identify and study various and diverse approaches and how these schools of thought have contributed to under...
Article
Full-text available
This special issue of the Journal on Chain and Network Science on 'Agricultural cooperatives in netchains' includes new research on three research themes: (1) explanation of why are cooperatives particularly important in certain food netchains; (2) willingness of farmers to invest in their cooperative's netchain; and (3) the role of ambidexterity i...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Resource based view approach is proposed as theoretical framework in order to identify the existence of similar organizational models in a sample of firms operating in the Sicilian wine industry, and the key success factors for superior export success. The findings of this research show that managers' age and wineries' export experience in export s...
Article
Full-text available
For years, scholars and policy makers have ar gued that cooperatives, particularly agricultural cooperatives, exhibit organizational inefficiencies primarily caused by individual member behavior that is often independent and non-cooperative conflicting with the formation of effective coalition building. This free riding tendency creates significant...
Article
Full-text available
Agricultural cooperatives represent a key institutional arrangement in the world food and agriculture industries. Understanding these business organizations by adopting multidisciplinary perspectives serves both scholarly and societal needs. This article addresses two issues: (1) how agricultural cooperatives choose from a plethora of ownership and...
Article
This paper addresses the issue of how the institutional environment shapes cooperatives’ ability to address the free rider problem and combat intra-organizational challenges. Particularly we focus on Santo Wines, a mandatory wine cooperative based on the island of Santorini, Greece; membership of local grape-growers in the cooperative is compulsory...
Article
Full-text available
The importance of cooperatives for European farmers has often been claimed but empirical studies to support this claim are scarce. This special issue presents a number of articles on the recent development and status of agricultural cooperatives in the European Union, based on original data collected in the EU-wide study 'Support for Farmers' Coope...
Article
Full-text available
Agricultural cooperatives represent a key institutional arrangement in the world food and agriculture industries. Understanding these business organizations by adopting multi-disciplinary perspectives serves both scholarly and societal needs. This paper addresses two issues: 1) how agricultural cooperatives choose from a plethora of ownership and g...
Presentation
Full-text available
In the context of the European co-operative movement, Greece is remarkable since no other European country has so many agricultural co-operatives that produce so little value for their farmer-members. Continuous, efficiency-robbing government interventions into co-operatives’ affairs and the opportunistic behavior of some co-operative leaders expla...
Chapter
The last two decades witnessed the emergence of various innovative capitalization methods for co-operatives in Europe, the United States, and Oceania (Cook and Iliopoulos 1999; Gijselinckx and Develtere 2008; Iliopoulos 2009; Zhao et al. 2009). Such innovations range from amendments to co-operative legislation and bylaws to allow non-member, stakeh...
Article
This paper addresses the issue of whether nontraditional agricultural cooperatives should be eligible for receiving public policy support. We adopt an organizational economics approach that appears to better inform policy design and suggest critical questions that both policy makers and regulators need to address before introducing measures and san...
Article
Full-text available
The economic nature of agricultural cooperatives is explained by means of a logical continuation of the organizational economics rationale for family farms. The traditional explanations of the importance of family farms is discussed, and embedded in a broader framework which considers their transaction cost-economizing effect and their limitations...
Article
Full-text available
Rural development has significantly benefited from intensifying relations between the government and third sector organizations (TSOs) during last several decades. TSOs can introduce innovation in rural development in numerous ways: advocacy, awareness raising, contracting, direct delivery of public goods, etc. However, there is a growing concern t...
Article
Full-text available
The economic nature of agricultural cooperatives is explained by means of a logical continuation of the organizational economics rationale for family farms. The traditional explanations of the importance of family farms is discussed, and embedded in a broader framework which considers their transaction cost-economizing effect and their limitations...
Article
Full-text available
This paper explores the cross-fertilization potential that exists between the economic theory of agricultural cooperatives and that of nonprofit organizations. A number of central ideas in the agricultural cooperative theory are shown to generate two novel insights pertaining to the nonprofit economics literature. First, as with agricultural cooper...
Article
Agricultural cooperatives have changed considerably in recent decades. In witnessing these structural changes, scholars have proffered analyses of non-traditional ownership models focusing on residual claim rights. As a result, crucial information on the allocation of control rights in cooperatives is missing. This paper makes a contribution to thi...
Article
This paper addresses the issue of whether nontraditional agricultural cooperatives should be eligible for receiving public policy support. We adopt an organizational economics approach that appears to better inform policy design and suggest critical questions that both policy makers and regulators need to address before introducing measures and san...
Article
Full-text available
New institutional economists have identified a number of property rights problems of agricultural cooperatives. This paper reconsiders these problems from the perspective of the heterodox institutionalist economics in the tradition of Veblen and Ayres. The property rights problems of agricultural cooperatives seemingly reinforce the new institution...
Article
Full-text available
Purpose The purpose of this paper is to identify which innovation implementation strategies have the highest success potential, and which factors affect the adoption of fruit‐related innovations by consumers. The authors focus on consumer‐driven and responsive fruit supply chains. Design/methodology/approach The authors propose a new conceptual fr...
Article
Full-text available
This paper compares the new institutional economics literature on agricultural cooperatives to their actual operation in Greece. The key contrast thus revealed concerns the role of opportunism. New institutional economics explains cooperatives in terms of their ability to combat external opportunism, subject to the constraints of internal opportuni...
Article
Full-text available
This paper explores the cross-fertilization potential that exists between the economic theory of agricultural cooperatives and that of nonprofit organizations. A number of central ideas in the agricultural cooperative theory are shown to generate two novel insights pertaining to the nonprofit economics literature. First, as with agricultural cooper...
Article
Full-text available
This paper compares the new institutional economics literature on agricultural cooperatives to their actual operation in Greece. The key contrast thus revealed concerns the role of opportunism. New institutional economics explains cooperatives in terms of their ability to combat external opportunism, subject to the constraints of internal opportuni...
Article
Full-text available
This report provides the overall conclusions of the full study. It was carried out by a European research consortium during 2011 and 2012. Data gathered in all 27 Member States have been presented and analysed in separate country reports. The data collected were also used in preparing eight sector reports, focusing on the role of cooperatives in ea...
Article
Full-text available
The imbalances in bargaining power between the contracting parties in the food supply chain have drawn much scholarly attention but have also been closely examined by policy makers. The European Commission is committed to facilitate the restructuring of the agricultural sector by encouraging the creation of voluntary agricultural producer organisat...
Article
Full-text available
Support for Farmers’ Cooperatives Study Abstract Given the imbalances in bargaining power between contracting parties along the food supply chain, the European Commission (DG Agriculture and Rural Development) has launched a large study to gain better insights in the policies that could help farmers to self-organise in cooperatives as a means of...
Article
Following European Directive 2003/30/EC, the Greek Government adapted legislation that introduces and regulates the bio diesel market. The implemented quota scheme allocates the country's annual, predetermined, tax exempt production of bio diesel to industries based on their ability to meet several criteria. A number of bio diesel supply chain stak...
Article
Full-text available
This paper addresses the influence costs problem in the governance structure of “agribusiness cooperative.” Influence costs are higher in cooperatives than in investor-oriented firms due to the unique governance structure of the former. Hypotheses are formulated and tested regarding the relationship between influence costs and seven variables: memb...
Article
Full-text available
Third sector organisations play a prominent role in rural development. Yet, such organisations have been largely neglected by existing economic research. This paper examines the potential role of standard theories of the third sector and collective action in explaining the motivations to form such organisations in rural settings. In doing so the pa...
Chapter
Full-text available
This paper addresses the issue of how intra-organizational incentive alignment mechanisms evolve to solve the free rider problem in collective bargaining. We focus on agricultural bargaining cooperatives (ABCs), a particular form of producer-owned firms mainly observed in the West Coast states of the US. These organizations play several crucial ins...
Chapter
Introduction: The food and agriculture sector offers many opportunities to apply concepts from the new institutional economics (NIE). Indeed, some of the earliest modern studies on economic organization focussed on agricultural contracting such as cropsharing (Stiglitz 1974), land tenancy arrangements (Roumasset and Uy 1980; Alston and Higgs 1982;...