Mutual, Cooperative and Employee-Owned Businesses in the Asia Pacific

The 25 years leading up to the global financial crisis have been depicted as ‘capitalism unleashed’, with deregulation, privatisation, demutualisation and financialisation. Yet, given this economic and political context, co-operatives and mutuals appear to have been gaining ground in many countries, albeit modestly, even before the financial crisis and the global recession, from which the global economy is still only slowly recovering. This book looks at the contribution of co-operative, mutual and employee-owned firms to the Asia Pacific economy and the challenges the standard ‘Western’ model faces. This book was originally published as a Special Issue of Asia Pacific Business Review.