Social enterprises, cooperatives, civic enterprises and associations make an important contribution to shaping the provision of services for the common good in all supply sectors. This volume uses case studies on citizen energy cooperatives, community-based agriculture, senior citizens' cooperatives and platform cooperativism to examine how such organizations operate. A particular focus is on the comparative empirical analysis of cooperative structures in the four supply sectors. This makes it clear how cooperative business functions in civil society and to what extent this promotes the common good.  

The IÖW's main contributions are the case studies on citizen energy and platform cooperativism as well as the comparative analysis of umbrella organizations from the various supply sectors. As the project leader of the Teilgabe project, the IÖW was also significantly involved in the conceptual framework and the overall synthesis of the results. The book makes pioneering, empirically sound statements about the importance of cooperative business in general and specifically about the perspectives of umbrella organizations to support such civil society-based forms of business oriented towards the common good. 

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More about the project: www.teilgabe.net