Identification of stakeholders and conflicts of interest in the Ecuador Savings and credit cooperatives

Abstract

In the Savings and Credit Cooperatives management is different from the traditional approach, its administration is complicated by the democratic participation of the partners in the government of it and in the decision making. This aspect generates a special agency relationship because the partners who are owners can be both professional managers and workers. This situation causes conflicts of interest that generate risks and affect institutional performance. In this context, this research seeks to determine the stakeholders in the cooperatives and analyze their main conflicts of interest. For this purpose, an exploratory research was carried out using the methodology proposed by Gorrochategui, Casali, Frecia and Gigante, as an instrument for data collection to characterize and obtain the relationships among the stakeholders. Subsequently, in a sample of 58 cooperatives, as indicated by Mitchell, Agle and Wood, stakeholders were identified and classified according to attributes, power, legitimacy and urgency. Based on the above, it was determined that the model is applicable, as it allowed identifying and classifying according to its degree of preponderance to nine generic stakeholders and confirming the proposal made in this research.