Cooperatives and Sustainable Development in Southwest Nigeria
A Triple Bottom Line, Institutional and Stakeholder Theory Conceptual Framework
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Abstract
Cooperative societies are widely credited with advancing sustainable development, yet the claim is usually made in aggregate, without an account of the institutional mechanisms through which cooperatives generate economic, social and environmental outcomes together, or of the conditions under which they fail to. This conceptual, theory-building paper integrates the triple bottom line, institutional theory and stakeholder theory, applies them to Southwest Nigeria and maps outcomes to the Sustainable Development Goals. Using a purposive, theory-driven synthesis of the literature, it defines eleven constructs and derives ten propositions with boundary conditions, indicative measures, suggested tests and the results that would count against each. The framework proposes that institutional arrangements (member governance, financial intermediation, capacity building and external partnerships) shape outcomes in the three domains; that institutional alignment and regional context, defined generically as financial depth, infrastructure and competition, moderate these relationships; and that stakeholder balance bears on durability. Environmental outcomes are expected to be the least developed domain. Existing regional evidence is largely cross-sectional, partly from the authors’ own group and descriptive, so the propositions are hypotheses, and those lacking independent grounding (P6, P9 and P10) are treated as exploratory. The paper concludes that institutional alignment, rather than legal form, is the variable most worth testing. It recommends that researchers test the propositions with multilevel and configurational designs and that policymakers and cooperative boards, conditional on those tests, prioritise alignment, partnerships for environmental practice and outcome reporting across all three domains.
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Copyright (c) 2026 Oforbuike Francis Nwachukwu, Akpan Ifeyinwa Gift, Udoka Stephen Otika, Ani Jude Ndubuisi, Taiwo Olabisi Abdulahi (Author)
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
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