Kooperatives Wirtschaften versus Gewinnmaximierung: Steht der Dualismus auf der Kippe?

The two economic crises at the beginning of this millennium have pulled critical voices on the current capitalistic system. On the one hand, the idea of cooperative economics as a non-profit maximising alternative resurrects, whereas cooperatives orientate themselves even more on capital companies. The dual characteristics of social and economic targets even enforce this diverge, also amidst the new perspectives on the triple bottom line. Beside an academic discussion, this paper strives at introducing such cooperative and public interest themes into the Z’GuG to arouse the interest of the readers and to stimulate further research. The issues identified in the literature review are embroadened by the heterogenuity of current cooperative studies and put into a new context. We prove that the previously applied formal approaches may not help solve the inherent discrepancies, but need more interdisciplinary methods in the interplay between idealization and specific concerns to rewind former appraisals.