Food cooperatives are distinguished from other food distribution organizations by their ability to offer and support specific, quality products, or products imbued with ideology (i.e. organic agriculture) to consumers, and to establish close relationships between producers and consumers . They develop strong social inclusion processes (Chiffoleau et al, 2017) which consist, beyond social and consumption differences, in integrating consumers around values that unite them and in promoting conviviality. However, the literature informs us that beyond the federating values, some exclusionary mechanisms can rise (Fourat et al., 2020 ; Lepiller et Valette, 2021). Thus, we aim to investigate the critical tension between inclusion and exclusion that arise in such food cooperatives.
In this article we draw on the work of Shore et al. (2011) who invite to investigate the contextual antecedents of inclusion, namely the climate, the leadership and the practices, to identify to what extent they are also producing exclusion. Our final aim is to understand how the cooperative manage this tension between inclusion and exclusion. Indeed, all social purpose organizations experience tensions, which is not necessarily negative insofar as they make it possible to introduce an organizational dynamic that encourages actors to constantly make new trade-offs, particularly in the management of dialectics (Dorion, 2017).