Abstract
Co-operatives are constitutional hybrids where the hybridity is laid down in structural components such as rules and regulations and is visible in ownership arrangements and organizational mission. We seek to advance the current scholarly debate on organizational governance by applying a structural and processual analytical framework on empirical data consisting of interviews with members and elected officials in a sizeable Swedish forestry co-operative.We argue that market imperatives of economies of scale in the agricultural industry have led to increasingly larger farms and also to increasingly larger and more centralized agricultural businesses. This has in turn diminished the number of members which are to govern the businesses in these co-operatives, and also increased the size and complexity of the governance task. We will thus argue that this development indicates an ongoing re-balancing of the hybrid character of the co-operative studied, with clear governance implications.