Mobility Car Sharing: An Evolving Cooperative Structure

  • Suter, Peter Institute for Research on Management of Associations, Foundations and Co-operatives (VMI), University of Fribourg, Fribourg, Switzerland
  • Gmür, Markus Institute for Research on Management of Associations, Foundations and Co-operatives (VMI), University of Fribourg, Fribourg, Switzerland
    2014
Published in:
  • Research Handbook on Sustainable Co-operative Enterprise. Case Studies of Organisational Resilience in the Co-operative Business Model / Limnios, Elena M.. - Cheltenham/Northampton: Edward Elgar. - 2014, p. 301-326
English Co-operatives have a statistically low macroeconomic relevance; nevertheless they occasionally are big players in specific sectors and countries. In Switzerland, the two largest retail co-operatives, Migros and Coop, are responsible for 8% of GDP. In comparison to its neighbouring countries, the co-operative is a very popular legal form in Switzerland with more than 10,000 organisations. The number of co-operatives in the more heavily populated Germany seems to be very low, only 8,106 (Table 18.1); although it should not be ignored that 20 million Germans are members of these co-operatives, which provide jobs for 440,000 people (ICA, 2011). In Switzerland, co-operatives can mainly be found in the financial, retail, social housing and agriculture sectors (Gmür and Lichtsteiner, 2009). But several other successful co-operatives also exist in niche markets. One of these is the Mobility Car Sharing co-operative. The principle of car sharing is very simple: instead of owning a car the individual has access to a fleet of vehicles on an as-needed basis. Therefore s/he gains the benefits of a "private" car without the responsibilities and full cost of ownership (Shaheen et al., 1999). Today the concept of car sharing is widespread, but mostly still limited to certain local areas, with a focus on bigger cities. Switzerland is an exception and can actually be called the motherland of car sharing for two reasons.
Faculty
Faculté des sciences économiques et sociales et du management
Department
Institut pour la gestion des associations, des fondations et des sociétés coopératives (VMI)
Language
  • English
Classification
Economics
License
License undefined
Identifiers
Persistent URL
https://folia.unifr.ch/unifr/documents/306636
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