Abstract:

The purpose of the article is to determine the relationship between the level of competitiveness of tangible and intangible resources and financial performance of social cooperatives. Our analysis is based on data collected by survey method. In the preliminary analysis we use the data provided by 57 respondents – the leaders of social cooperatives operating in Poland. Moreover, for in-depth analysis we involve the data of 20 cooperatives from the EMIS Intelligence database. By using the Spearman's rank correlation we investigate the relationship between the rating of the level of competitiveness of tangible (physical, technological, financial) and intangible (human, relational, knowledge) resources and the cooperatives’ financial performance, i.e. the rating of profitability and revenues. Initially, the research results proved that there are average relationships between the rating of profitability and the rating of competitiveness of tangible (0.38) and intangible (0.42) resources. Moreover, by giving the higher rating to the competitiveness of intangible resources the respondents stated that they are slightly more competitive than their tangible resources. However, in the in-depth analysis, based on objective data, even weak correlation between either tangible or intangible resources and the revenues was not found. This paper makes two major contribution to the literature. Firstly, it joins the debate on impact of tangible and intangible resources on organization’s performance, especially in the context of competitiveness. And secondly, it analyses this problem in social cooperatives, taking into account their specificity. While research on social cooperatives is scant, mainly due to their complexity and the impossibility of applying traditional frameworks organisations, the article contributes to filling the gap in this area.