How training initiatives by support organizations strengthen the resilience of agricultural cooperatives

Agricultural cooperatives constitute essential pillars of Morocco’s social economy, yet despite substantial institutional support, many struggle with management effectiveness. A previous quantitative study (N = 178) revealed a paradox: training and support from institutions showed no significant impact on cooperative management practices, contradicting cooperative theory. This qualitative study examines this training transfer gap by investigating institutional support organizations’ perspectives. We conducted semi-structured interviews with 14 officials from nine key organizations in Casablanca-Settat region. Thematic analysis identified five major themes explaining the paradox: structural barriers limiting participation, content misalignment between institutional offerings and cooperative needs, lack of post-training follow-up, coordination gaps between organizations, and implementation barriers beyond knowledge deficits. The training transfer gap emerges not from absence of institutional effort but from systemic misalignment between supply-side programming and demand-side realities. Rather than mandatory training, findings suggest demand-driven contextualized interventions with sustained accompaniment, environmental support addressing resource constraints, and strengthened inter-organizational coordination. This study contributes by integrating social capital, capacity-building, and institutional theories to explain support ineffectiveness, providing rare institutional perspectives on cooperative support challenges.