La sopravvivenza delle cooperative sociali.Un’analisi empirica delle realtà imprenditoriali in Piemonte.

This work analyses the effects of demographic conditions for the survival of nonprofit companies. The debate and research hypothesis are drawn from the theoretical prospects of both Organizational Ecology and the Resource-Based View of the firm. The article focuses the rates of entry and exit of Piedmont cooperative companies in the Unioncamere Piemonte’s archives for the years 2003-2012. Evidences are clear that the demographic size of the company affects its survival. To measure these effects parametric and semi-parametric duration analysis models are used as the work is developed in two phases. The first, carried out using survival curves drawn up adopting the Kaplan Meier method, aims at verifying if social cooperative companies present different survival patterns; the second uses the Cox Proportional Hazard Model in order to measure the impact that demographic factors have on probability of duration. Results show that social companies risk of failure is higher than in the cooperative world. In spite of the effects of the economic crisis these organisations have reduced their risk of mortality proving, once again, that their entrepreneurial model can constitute a valid response and a catalyst element in the relaunch challenge of local territorial systems and in the conciliation between goals of economic competitiveness and social cohesion. ¨