ROLA SPÓŁDZIELCZOŚCI W ROZWOJU REGIONALNYM
THE ROLE OF COOPERATIVES IN REGIONAL DEVELOPMENT

Summary/Abstract: Co-operative movement was born in the period of increasing socio-economic inequalities of industrial capitalism. Nearly two centuries of experience show that co-operatives as a form of doing business prevents and protects their members from the process of deteriorating living and working conditions.By pooling their resources and implementing democratic management, co-operatives accumulate savings,they also accumulate human and social capital. Their activities take place on a local scale, in the city, in the municipality or region. As indicated by contemporary regional development theories, they use and accumulate internal resources. The purpose of the article is to indicate the role that cooperatives play in local development, by the accumulation of resources. In the light of the theory of endogenous development,investments are internal resource. Capital expenditures per worker are assumed to represent capital accumulation. This indicator can represent capital accumulation, with the real assumption that cooperatives are gathering resources locally. The article uses data on investment outlays and the number of employed in co-operatives from the Statistical Yearbooks of the Central Statistical Office for the period 2007–2015. Reports from international cooperative organizations that emphasized the importance of cooperatives in local development in the world were also helpful. The survey provides the following conclusions: on the one hand, we are witnessing a falling number of co-operatives, a decline in employment in this sector and a decrease in investment outlays, on the other we have regions where cooperatives belong to the largest enterprises and are stable employers.

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