Determination of the Most Important Affecting Factors Cooperatives Economy in Iran in the Next Decade Using Grounded Theory

Cooperative sector is one of the three major sectors of national economy recognized in the Constitution. Any failure or negligence to identify the most important economy, social and cultural factors affecting the flourish and growth of cooperatives would hinder the development of cooperatives sector under the existing competitive circumstances at international level. This study was thus an attempt to determine and explain the most important above-mentioned factors in cooperative sector using grounded theory approach. To select the experts for interview, purposive sampling method was used. Grounded theory is an exploratory research method that allows the researcher to extract new hypotheses out of the collected data when a hypothesis cannot be derived through conventional procedures. In other words, grounded theory provides adequate knowledge about the subject under study or about the topics with little knowledge available on them, or those that have not yet been the subject of a comprehensive research. The data was gathered through available documents and articles, as well as interviews with 18 related influential experts with high levels of education and experience and a very good command of cooperatives economy. MAX QDA software was employed for data analysis. The result was a theory about economic, social and cultural factors affecting cooperatives economy in Iran. The factors were presented under 3 main categories and 16 sub-categories and the theory was named “the theory of the development of cooperative economy”.