Document Type

Article

Source of Publication

Business Strategy and the Environment

Publication Date

12-23-2025

Abstract

The shift towards sustainable food production is essential to address the urgent dual challenges of climate change and population growth, with agricultural cooperatives playing a vital role in this transformation. However, many cooperatives struggle to deliver the expected value to their members. By considering cooperatives as member-centred production systems, this research investigates relational capital's role in determining cooperative success. This study uses a sequential mixed-methods research approach. First, we use empirical survey data from 320 farmers to test a moderated mediation model that links relational capital to collaboration activities and outcomes. Then, we use qualitative responses from 50 farmers to investigate the results obtained from the survey study further. The survey study reveals the existence of a ‘dark side’ to relational capital in agricultural cooperatives, materialised by its surprising negative moderating effect on the relationship between collaborative efforts and outcomes. The qualitative interview results reveal the underlying mechanisms that bring out this dark side, namely the effects of restriction, complaisance, and blurred lines. By revealing the existence of a dark side to relational capital and meticulously categorising the mechanisms underlying its emergence, this study extends the limited existing knowledge of the adverse effects of relational capital.

ISSN

0964-4733

Publisher

Wiley

Disciplines

Business

Keywords

agricultural cooperatives, dark side, food systems, production systems, relational capital, sustainability, sustainable

Scopus ID

105025729149

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Indexed in Scopus

yes

Open Access

yes

Open Access Type

Hybrid: This publication is openly available in a subscription-based journal/series

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Business Commons

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