Hossein Jorjani
First publication: 2026 – 08 – 22
Discussions of alternative forms of ownership frequently rely on individual examples. A successful cooperative may be presented as evidence that cooperative ownership works, while a failed enterprise may be treated as evidence that it does not. Neither conclusion follows from an individual case. Exceptional success and exceptional failure occur under every form of ownership and cannot by themselves establish the general properties of an institutional form.
Private enterprises also succeed and fail. Their survival depends upon many factors, including size, age, sector, financing, management, market conditions, and the wider institutional environment. Cooperative and public, nongovernmental enterprises operate under comparable pressures. Their viability should therefore be assessed not against an imaginary standard of guaranteed success, but against comparable enterprises operating under other forms of ownership.
The appropriate unit of comparison is consequently the population rather than the individual enterprise. An ownership form may be regarded as institutionally viable when populations of enterprises organized under it display patterns of survival that are not substantially inferior to those of comparable private enterprises. Such comparisons require attention to relevant differences in enterprise size, age, sector, financing, market conditions, and economic environment. Without reasonable comparability, differences in survival cannot confidently be attributed to ownership form.
Persistence through time provides an additional criterion. An enterprise that survives only under its founding members, an exceptional manager, temporary protection, or unusually favorable local conditions provides limited evidence about the durability of its institutional structure. Survival across successive generations of members and managers offers stronger evidence that the organization can reproduce itself independently of particular individuals.
Independent replication across different populations and institutional settings strengthens the inference further. If comparable forms of cooperative or public, nongovernmental ownership persist in different regions, sectors, or economic environments, it becomes less plausible to explain their survival entirely by exceptional leadership or favorable local circumstances. No single case, however successful, can provide the evidential weight supplied by repeated persistence across independent populations.
Economic survival, however, is not sufficient to establish the success of an ownership form whose defining purpose includes participation or collective control. A cooperative may survive economically while effective authority becomes concentrated among managers, administrators, or a small group of members. Likewise, formally public or collective ownership may persist while the intended beneficiaries lose meaningful influence over decisions. Institutional durability and participatory durability are therefore separate criteria.
Assessment must consequently examine both. The first question is whether enterprises organized under a particular ownership form can survive under conditions comparable to those faced by other enterprises. The second is whether they can do so while preserving the governance characteristics that distinguish that ownership form. An enterprise that survives economically by gradually abandoning those characteristics may demonstrate the viability of the enterprise, but not necessarily the viability of the original form of ownership.
Once institutional viability has been established, a different question arises: what function might the continued presence of alternative ownership forms perform within a plural economy? Cooperatives and public, nongovernmental enterprises need not become predominant forms of ownership in order to have economic and institutional significance. Their continued existence increases the diversity of organizational forms through which production and services can be provided.
Such diversity permits comparison and competition not only among individual enterprises but also among different arrangements of ownership and governance. It may limit excessive institutional concentration and preserve practical alternatives to conventional private ownership. The significance of alternative ownership forms therefore need not depend upon their replacing private enterprise.
Their continued existence can also preserve institutional capacity. Organizations, skills, governance practices, legal arrangements, and networks that already exist can be expanded more readily than institutions that must be created from nothing. Where private enterprises withdraw, essential services become inadequate, or social needs remain unmet, established cooperative or public, nongovernmental organizations may therefore provide alternative means of maintaining production, employment, or services.
The central question is consequently not whether a particular cooperative succeeds or fails, nor whether cooperative or public ownership should replace private enterprise. The methodological question is whether populations of enterprises organized under alternative ownership forms can persist under comparable conditions while preserving the characteristics that distinguish those forms. Only after that question has been investigated can their broader economic and institutional functions be assessed.
The value of maintaining alternative ownership forms may therefore lie partly in their demonstrated performance and partly in the capacities their continued existence preserves. A plural economy need not select a single institutional form as universally superior. It can instead maintain several viable forms of organization, allowing their performance to be compared and preserving alternatives that can assume wider responsibilities when circumstances require them.
Hossein Jorjani 