WCM 2015 WEB (original) (raw)
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International Business & Economics Research Journal (IBER), 2014
Sustainability reporting, renowned as an instrument for businesses to communicate how they function more efficiently and responsibly within the social and physical environment, while simultaneously remaining profitable, has evolved in an up-and-coming trend by businesses. In addition, this leads to integrated reporting, which implies that a business strategy, performance, risk and sustainability are inseparable from one another. The International Year of Co-operatives (2012), with the theme Co-operative Enterprises Build a Better World, recognises that co-operatives, in their range of forms, support the fullest participation in the social and economic development of people. Co-operatives also have the remarkable opportunity to grow everywhere for the reason that modern society needs their role and initiatives.This article considers to what extent the GRI guidelines, as a reporting framework, are feasible or applicable to co-operatives as a business model. The selected agricultural c...
International Co-operative Alliance Blueprint for a Co-operative Decade
Blueprint for a Co-operative Decade, 2013
The Blueprint for a Co-operative Decade is the International Co-operative Alliance’s global strategy of and for co-operatives. To achieve the 2020 Vision of the Blueprint, the Alliance pursues Blueprint programmes in five priority areas: Participation, Sustainability, Identity, Legal Frameworks and Capital. The Blueprint aims to strengthen the co-operative model and grow the global movement. Co-operatives are a vehicle of growth and development – a business model that allows people and communities to meet their needs and aspirations. Co-operatives offer a unique answer to contemporary problems – a space where individual economic pursuits are valued, and where these economic pursuits are embedded within a holistic consideration of the world in which we live.
Co-operatives and their place in a global social economy
For most of the world's developing countries, the 1990s were a decade of frustration and disappointment. The economies of sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America did not rebound economically in response to the structural adjustment prescriptions of the World Bank and IMF (Rodrik 2001; 2002). Frustration with the World Bank and IMF led to the development of many cooperatives in Latin America (Miller, 2006). Involuntary unemployment is capitalism’s most costly market failure and the demand for social services like the social-professional reintegration of disadvantaged groups usually cannot be provided solely by national governments (Monzón Campos, 1997). An alternative economy often arises in response to unemployment. This alternative economy is composed of co-operatives and NGOs working on small projects for community economic development and ethical businesses providing services (camps, financing, daycare, media, housing, women’s centres) (Corcoran and Wilson, 2010). Other groups w...
THE CO-OPERATIVE FIRM KEYWORDS Edited by
Whether you think you know all there is to know or you know next to nothing about the co-operative sector, this book is for you. An A to Z of the co-operative movement, this collection of short essays will introduce you to the diverse, broad, and multifaceted world of co-operatives. Co-operatives have a very long history, yet are still out there competing with their capitalist rivals in almost every market and every industry. They are rooted in revolutionary ideas, yet are more feasible and effective than many attempted revolutions, and they provide work, goods, and services to hundreds of millions of members in virtually every corner of the globe. If you know little but want to know more, read some or all of the 23 stories of co-operative theory, history, and practice, written by world-leading experts. If you are already a co-operative member, an academic, or a practitioner with experience in the field, this straight-talking and jargon-free book will present new and exciting perspectives on a field you (think you) already know. If you are looking for a different way to produce goods and deliver services to your community and if you aspire to a a different market, a different firm, or form of work, this book is for you. A succinct but provocative guide to the on-going, pragmatic revolution that is the co-operative sector, a revolution in ownership that we should all embrace after the failure of the Occupy Wall Street protests.
Co-operative Enterprise as a Coalition of Small Firms
2012
Abstract: Co-operative enterprises represent some of the largest and most durable business entities in the world. They are found in all countries and across a wide range of industries. Co-ops are member owned businesses that can be formed by small business owners, farmers and the wider community. They have a unique business model that is part economic and part social in its focus. The purpose of co-ops is to provide benefits to their members.
Do workers' co-operatives innovate in the third world?
Science and Public Policy
Third world workers' cooperatives are heavily dependent on the industrialized nations for their technological innovations. They often have difficulty implementing them because of lack of management, marketing and financial skills. Being run by the workers, the co-operatives' principal consideration is to provide security of employment. They can fall behind their private sector competitors because they are less willing to introduce labour saving technology. In organizational innovation, the third world cooperatives are certainly ahead of the private firms in their own countries, and probably of cooperatives in the UK. All businesses innovate. Workers' cooperatives in the third world are no exception to this. Innovation is intrinsic to their formation and survival. Innovation is the commercial application of new ideas, devices, products, processes or systems of organisation. It can be seen as a process which begins in a firm with the conception or invention of new ideas. From the pool of new ideas, only some are selected, then developed and tested. Finally some ideas go through to commercial application. After a new product, process or system is adopted, it often spreads through and across industries, markets and economies. This is often referred to as diffusion. Enterprises in advanced industrialized countries are overwhelmingly pre-eminent in technological innovation. Technological innovation in the third world is largely dependent upon the international diffusion of new techniques. The adoption of new techniques by a firm in a third Ed Barbier lectures in economics at Websters University, Geneva and is currently researching for a PhD on natural resource scarcity at BirkbeckCollege, London University, Malet Street, London WCl. Nick Mahoney has been working with workers' cooperatives for many years in a number of countries. He is currently a consultant with Cooperative Advisory Group,
The Co-operative Model in Practice, 2012
While on the fringe of conventional managerial thought, worker participation and workplace democracy are at the very core of the co-operative business. Worker co- operative firm’s essential features, including common ownership and equal voting rights, place them firmly as special cases of participatory organizations, with a strong presence of values of equity, reciprocity, and liberty (Zamagni & Zamagni, 2010). Due to this uniqueness of co-operative entrepreneurship it is crucial to use an appropriate framework to evaluate co-operative performance. The literature assesses this type of organization by the same efficiency standards as the investor-owned enterprise, creating an ‘identity crisis’ for co-operatives with dual character- associational on the one hand, and a market-driven business on the other. The chapter provides both students and co-operative managers with methods and tools to initiate organizational change by first assessing performance of worker co-operatives as one of the ways to find the spots that weaken their social functions. It contributes to the discourse on the impact of employee participation in organizations by drawing on the theoretical and practical aspects of diagnosing and developing the “co-operative difference.” As the traditional approach to the theory of participation has been unable to capture the level of participation in co-operative firms, the chapter makes a case for the application of the Total participation (TP) framework (Stocki et al., 2008; Stocki, Assessing participation Page 3 2008; Prokopowicz et al., 2008) as an underlying concept in measuring co-operatives’ organizational performance. From the perspective of performance measurement, total participation framework offers elements that constitute a normative benchmark, or an “ideal” co-operative firm. The chapter describes the CoopIndex - a tool developed by the authors within the worker co-operative sector – used to diagnose key areas of co- operative performance linked to co-operative principles and values.