Bringing the organizational common purpose to life: Application to the case of French multi-stakeholder cooperatives
In the light of Barnard’s (1938) theoretical framework centered on the concept of common purpose, this article analyzes the extent to which multi-stakeholder cooperatives (MSCs) contribute to regulate around a common project the behavior of a plurality of stakeholders. Based on the study of four French MSCs, we show that bringing the common purpose to life cannot be decreed, but is built over time. Our results question the place of employees in MSCs and highlight the contribution of our analytical framework to the existing literature on cooperation applied to these cooperatives.