Adequacy between cooperative entrepreneurship and territorial development: study of the mediating effect of social innovation in cooperatives operating in the Souss-Massa region

Abstract

This paper is part of an essay on social and solidarity economy, in search of studying the adequacy between cooperative entrepreneurship and territorial development. In this sense, the overview of the conceptual and evolutionary genesis of the key concepts allowed us to draw up a theoretical corpus, which treats a panoply of theories likely to detect the evolutionary genesis of the link between cooperative entrepreneurship and territorial development. Also, the mediating role of social innovation in territorial development at the level of the region Souss Massa. Our research is based on a positivist methodological approach. To this end, we conducted quantitative research through a questionnaire survey of 102 cooperatives operating in the Souss Massa region. The data were extrapolated to estimate our structural equation model using a partial least squares approach. Finally, the results obtained allowed us to answer the problem raised and to provide elements of answers, namely the determinants of the explanatory causal relationship between cooperative entrepreneurship and territorial development.