Cooperatives enterprise, incubators for the co-design of a new organizational and management model for sustainable development

In the global economic context, cooperative enterprises have a considerable impact, with approximately one billion people worldwide estimated to be members of cooperatives (ICA e International Cooperative Alliance, 2015). In the historical evolution of the cooperative enterprise, they were born progressively, different typologies according to the most emerging collective problems (Depedri & Turri, 2015). However, the profound changes in the socio-economic context have expanded the emerging social needs, resulting in greater complexity that has challenged the established resilience of cooperatives. This complexity has led to the creation of a study based on the approach of Systemic Design (SD). Thanks to the primary tool of SD, the Holistic Diagnosis (HD), is possible to determine the current scenario and its complexity. The first phase of analysis of the context of the reference is viewed from multiple points of view, such as economy, society, demography, and culture to identify strengths. With this background, the aim of this study is to define the first basis to design a new organizational model for social cooperatives, in the Italian context, to face the actual fluid situation. Specifically, the study highlights the cooperative's hidden potentialities to improve the structure of the organization and provide effective answers within the economic context. The HD is the first step to develop a new organizational model for cooperative enterprises to be replicated on similar business models. To reach this goal a literature review is settled to highlight the actual gaps and a case study is analyzed in-depth in order to obtain original data and validate the first hypothesis.