| This research presents a brief discussion on governance and ethical behavior in cooperatives whereas more recently the cooperatives have faced survival challenges as a result of the governance problems and the governance of cooperatives is relatively under theorized in comparison with the governance of business corporations, where there is a large literature on corporate governance. Regarding even the answers for these problems have been not concluded yet in the private companies it is excellent that we think about governance inside of the cooperatives which are responsible companies for significant contribution in the economy of the countries. The chosen branch was the agricultural whereas this is one of the branches with bigger number of cooperatives and membership in Brazil it plays important role in the Brazilian economy and its participation in the Gross Domestic Product are important. Even with positive performance in the economy the agricultural cooperatives have faced the most diverse problems amongst them the governance and ethical behavior problems. The analyzed cooperative has a historical of almost fifty years of increasing development. Recently, however, the COTREL faced challenges of survival as resulted of the problems of ethical behavior of the members and the lack of mechanisms of governance. |
