El procedimiento del balance social cooperativo desarrollado por las cooperativas agrícolas francesas

The CFCA (French Confederation of Farming Co-operatives) has developed since 1998 a number of works on co-operative social balance adapted to farming co-operative companies, following the reflection initiated by the CJDES. The co-operative social balance, an innovative self-assessment procedure performed by the co-operative, is both an instrument to support managers in decision-making and a process to strengthen dialogue between co-operatives, their partners, and external stakeholders. The co-operative social balance brings co-operatives into a voluntary process of advancement, since diagnosis is attained in a participatory way, due to the large number of indicators of co-operative actions used, and provides support in defining lines of improvement. After a first stage in which a reference system was built to cover all the spheres of action in a co-operative society, the CFCA is currently conducting an experiment in fifty co-operative companies to validate these tools and study their use in depth. The present paper contains a description of the experiment and the procedure. The aim of the paper is not “scientific”, but rather to share with readers the observations attained and the means implemented by farming co-operatives in response to these new challenges.