Mission lost? Dilemmatic dual nature of co-operatives

This article contributes to the discussion on the dual nature, the defining and distinctive characteristic of co-operatives. We focus our analysis on interpreting what kind of meanings are attached to co-operatives' fundamental values and their dual nature and on how the research subjects construct co-operatives' defining characteristic in relation to other forms of enterprise. The article answers the question of how the dual nature of co-operatives is interpreted in university business students' texts. According to our analysis, the understanding of co-operatives is predominantly constructed via criticism of other forms of businesses, namely the predominant limited companies, cooperatives' dual nature invokes doubts and the relationship of co-operatives to other forms of businesses is unclear. The dual nature of co-operatives was fraught with dilemma as it was deemed very important that the co-operatives' ideology is marketed, that they should be profitable but in the notion of growth a conflict was perceived with the fundamental co-operative values. The data served to shed light on the fact that the mutually supportive elements of co-operative activity should be paid more profound attention.