Entrepreneurship and innovation in worker cooperatives and conventional firms: the role of external cooperation

Through the comparison of conventional firms (CFs) with worker cooperatives (WCs), which are a type of collective enterprise with significant experience in cooperation, this research aims to analyse the influence of external cooperation on the two most prominent factors for the success of enterprises: entrepreneurship and innovation. To this end, a research model is proposed based on contributions from the stakeholders' perspective of the resource-based view of the firm and tested with data from a survey conducted on WCs and CFs located in two Spanish regions with a long tradition in the cooperative movement. The results highlight that the influence of external cooperation on innovation performance is more relevant for WCs and demonstrate that these collective firms are not disadvantaged in innovation compared to CFs. Furthermore, the results suggest that WCs have a more remarkable ability to compete and cooperate simultaneously, that is, to coopete, due to their participative nature. Cooperation plays an essential role in boosting both entrepreneurship and innovation and workers cooperatives, firms launched by their workers, are the best example of this role. Entrepreneurship and innovation are seen as the two most essential elements to explain business success. Moreover, competition is considered the underlying force that makes entrepreneurship boost innovation. Nevertheless, many studies show innovation only occurs if businesses also cooperate with other stakeholders, such as suppliers, clients, and other firms and institutions. This research analyses the vital role of cooperation and shows that this role is even more relevant for working cooperatives, a type of collective firm with a participative way of making decisions, than it is for conventional firms, such as liability companies. The principal implication of this study is therefore that the cooperative nature of working cooperatives can contribute towards the introduction of innovations and towards a change in social values through their more balanced behaviour between competition and cooperation, a strategy known as "coopetition".