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A
cooperative ("
coop") or
co-operative ("
co-op") is an autonomous association of persons who
voluntarily cooperate for their mutual social, economic, and cultural benefit.
[1]
Cooperatives include non-profit community organizations and businesses
that are owned and managed by the people who use its services (a
consumer cooperative) or by the people who work there (a
worker cooperative) or by the people who live there (a
housing cooperative), hybrids such as worker cooperatives that are also consumer cooperatives or
credit unions,
multi-stakeholder cooperatives such as those that bring together civil
society and local actors to deliver community needs, and second and
third tier cooperatives whose members are other cooperatives.
The
International Co-operative Alliance was the first international association formed by the movement. It includes the
World Council of Credit Unions. A second organization was formed later in Germany, the International Raiffeisen Union. In the United States, the
National Cooperative Business Association
(NCBA) serves as the sector's oldest national membership association.
It is dedicated to ensuring that cooperative businesses have the same
opportunities as other businesses operating in the country and that
consumers have access to cooperatives in the marketplace. A U.S.
National Cooperative Bank was formed in the 1970s. By 2004, a new association focused on worker co-ops was founded, the
United States Federation of Worker Cooperatives.
Origins
Cooperation dates back as far as human beings have been organizing
for mutual benefit. Tribes were organized as cooperative structures,
allocating jobs and resources among each other, only trading with the
external communities. In alpine environments, trade could only be
maintained in organized cooperatives to achieve a useful condition of
artificial roads such as
Viamala in 1472.
[2] Pre-industrial Europe is home to the first cooperatives from an industrial context.
[3]
Robert Owen (1771–1858) was a social reformer and a pioneer of the cooperative movement.
In 1761, the
Fenwick Weavers' Society was formed in
Fenwick, East Ayrshire,
Scotland to sell
discounted oatmeal to local workers.
[4] Its services expanded to include assistance with savings and loans, emigration and education. In 1810,
Welsh social reformer Robert Owen, from Newtown in mid-
Wales, and his partners purchased
New Lanark mill from Owen's father-in-law
David Dale
and proceeded to introduce better labour standards including discounted
retail shops where profits were passed on to his employees. Owen left
New Lanark to pursue other forms of cooperative organization and develop
co-op ideas through writing and lecture. Cooperative communities were
set up in
Glasgow,
Indiana and
Hampshire, although ultimately unsuccessful. In 1828,
William King set up a newspaper,
The Cooperator, to promote Owen's thinking, having already set up a co-operative store in Brighton.,
[5][6]
The
Rochdale Society of Equitable Pioneers,
founded in 1844, is usually considered the first successful cooperative
enterprise, used as a model for modern co-ops, following the '
Rochdale Principles'. A group of 28 weavers and other artisans in
Rochdale,
England set up the society to open their own store selling food items
they could not otherwise afford. Within ten years there were over 1,000
cooperative societies in the United Kingdom.
[citation needed]
Other events such as the founding of a
friendly society by the
Tolpuddle Martyrs in 1832 were key occasions in the creation of organized labor and consumer movements.
[7]
Social economy
In the final year of the 20th century, cooperatives banded together to establish a number of
social enterprise agencies which have moved to adopt the multi-stakeholder cooperative model.
[8][9] In the last 15 years (1994–2009) the
EU and its member nations have gradually revised national accounting systems to "make visible" the increasing contribution of
social economy organizations.
[10]
Organizational and ideological roots
The roots of the cooperative movement can be traced to multiple influences and extend worldwide. In the
Anglosphere, post-
feudal
forms of cooperation between workers and owners that are expressed
today as "profit-sharing" and "surplus sharing" arrangements, existed as
far back as 1795.
[11] The key ideological influence on the Anglosphere branch of the cooperative movement, however, was a
rejection of the
charity principles that underpinned
welfare reforms when the
British government radically revised its
Poor Laws
in 1834. As both state and church institutions began to routinely
distinguish between the 'deserving' and 'undeserving' poor, a movement
of
friendly societies grew throughout the
British Empire based on the principle of mutuality, committed to self-help in the welfare of working people.
[citation needed]
Friendly Societies established forums through which
one member, one vote was practiced in organisation decision-making. The principles challenged the idea that a person should be an owner of
property before being granted a political voice.
[8]
Throughout the second half of the nineteenth century (and then
repeatedly every 20 years or so) there has been a surge in the number of
cooperative organisations, both in commercial practice and civil
society, operating to advance
democracy and
universal suffrage as a political principle.
[12] Friendly Societies and consumer cooperatives became the dominant form of organization amongst working people in Anglosphere
industrial societies prior to the rise of
trade unions
and industrial factories. Weinbren reports that by the end of the 19th
century, over 80% of British working age men and 90% of Australian
working age men were members of one or more Friendly Society.
[13]
From the mid-nineteenth century,
mutual organisations
embraced these ideas in economic enterprises, firstly amongst
tradespeople, and later in cooperative stores, educational institutes,
financial institutions and industrial enterprises. The common thread
(enacted in different ways, and subject to the constraints of various
systems of national law) is the principle that an enterprise or
association should be owned and controlled by the people it serves, and
share any surpluses on the basis of each member's cooperative
contribution (as a producer, labourer or consumer) rather than their
capacity to invest financial capital.
[14]
The cooperative movement has been fueled globally by ideas of
economic democracy.
Economic democracy is a socioeconomic philosophy that suggests an
expansion of decision-making power from a small minority of corporate
shareholders to a larger majority of public stakeholders. There are many
different approaches to thinking about and building economic democracy.
Both
Marxism and
anarchism, for example, have been influenced by
utopian socialism, which was based on voluntary cooperation,
without recognition of
class conflict. Anarchists are committed to
libertarian socialism
and have focused on local organization, including locally managed
cooperatives, linked through confederations of unions, cooperatives and
communities. Marxists, who as socialists have likewise held and worked
for the goal of democratizing productive and reproductive relationships,
often placed a greater strategic emphasis on confronting the larger
scales of human organization. As they viewed the capitalist class to be
politically, militarily and culturally mobilized for the purpose of
maintaining an exploitable
working class,
they fought in the early 20th century to appropriate from the
capitalist class the society's collective political capacity in the form
of
the state, either through
democratic socialism, or through what came to be known as
Leninism.
Though they regard the state as an unnecessarily oppressive
institution, Marxists considered appropriating national and
international-scale capitalist institutions and resources (such as the
state) to be an important first pillar in creating conditions favorable
to solidaristic economies.
[15][16] With the declining influence of the
USSR
after the 1960s, socialist strategies pluralized, though economic
democratizers have not as yet established a fundamental challenge to the
hegemony of global
neoliberal capitalism.
Meaning
Cooperatives as legal entities
A cooperative is a
legal entity
owned and democratically controlled by its members. Members often have a
close association with the enterprise as producers or consumers of its
products or services, or as its employees.
[17]
In some countries, e.g.
Finland and
Sweden,
there are specific forms of incorporation for cooperatives.
Cooperatives may take the form of companies limited by shares or by
guarantee, partnerships or unincorporated associations. In the UK they
may also use the
industrial and provident society
structure. In the USA, cooperatives are often organized as non-capital
stock corporations under state-specific cooperative laws. However, they
may also be unincorporated associations or business
corporations such as limited liability companies or
partnerships; such forms are useful when the members want to allow
[citation needed]:
- some members to have a greater share of the control, or
- some investors to have a return on their capital that exceeds fixed interest,
neither of which may be allowed under local laws for cooperatives.
Cooperatives often share their earnings with the membership as
dividends,
which are divided among the members according to their participation in
the enterprise, such as patronage, instead of according to the value of
their capital shareholdings (as is done by a
joint stock company).
Identity
Cooperatives are typically based on the cooperative values of
"self-help, self-responsibility, democracy and equality, equity and
solidarity" and the seven
cooperative principles:
[18]
- Voluntary and open membership
- Democratic member control
- Economic participation by members
- Autonomy and independence
- Education, training and information
- Cooperation among cooperatives
- Concern for community
Cooperatives are dedicated to the values of openness, social
responsibility and caring for others. Such legal entities have a range
of social characteristics. Membership is open, meaning that anyone who
satisfies certain non-discriminatory conditions may join. Economic
benefits are distributed proportionally to each member's level of
participation in the cooperative, for instance, by a dividend on sales
or purchases, rather than according to
capital invested.
[18] Cooperatives may be classified as either
worker,
consumer,
producer,
purchasing or
housing cooperatives.
[19]
They are distinguished from other forms of incorporation in that
profit-making or economic stability are balanced by the interests of the
community.
[18] Co-ops can sometimes be identified on the Internet through the use of the
.coop suffix of internet addresses. Organizations using .coop domain names must adhere to the basic co-op values.
The
United Nations has declared 2012 to be the International Year of Cooperatives (IYC)
[20]
Economic stability
Capital and the Debt Trap
reports that "[C]ooperatives tend to have a longer life than other
types of enterprise, and thus a higher level of entrepreneurial
sustainability. In [one study], the rate of survival of cooperatives
after three years was 75 percent, whereas it was only 48 percent for all
enterprises ... [and] after ten years, 44 percent of cooperatives were
still in operation, whereas the ratio was only 20 percent for all
enterprises" (p. 109). "Cooperative banks build up counter-cyclical
buffers that function well in case of a crisis," and are less likely to
lead members and clients towards a debt trap (p. 216). This is explained
by their more democratic governance that reduces
perverse incentives and subsequent contributions to
economic bubbles.
Types of cooperative governance
Non-monetary cooperative
A
non-monetary cooperative
provides a service based on entirely voluntary labour in the
maintenance and provision of a particular service or good, working in
the identical manner of a library. These co-ops are locally owned and
operated and provides the free rental of equipments of all kinds
(bicycles, sports, gear). This idea has been said to reduce general
human consumption of goods and is a key subject in sustainable
development
Retailers' cooperative
A
retailers' cooperative (known as a secondary or marketing cooperative in some countries) is an organization which employs
economies of scale on behalf of its members to receive discounts from manufacturers and to pool marketing. It is common for locally owned
grocery stores,
hardware stores and
pharmacies. In this case the members of the cooperative are businesses rather than individuals.
The
Best Western
international hotel chain is actually a retailers' cooperative, whose
members are hotel operators, although it refers to itself as a
"nonprofit membership association." It gave up on the "cooperative"
label after some courts insisted on enforcing regulatory requirements
for
franchisors despite its member-controlled status
Worker cooperative
A
worker cooperative
or producer cooperative is a cooperative, that is owned and
democratically controlled by its "worker-owners". There are no outside
owners in a "pure" workers' cooperative, only the workers own shares of
the business, though hybrid forms exist in which consumers, community
members or capitalist investors also own some shares. In practice,
control by worker-owners may be exercised through individual, collective
or majority ownership by the workforce, or the retention of individual,
collective or majority voting rights (exercised on a one-member
one-vote basis). A worker cooperative, therefore, has the characteristic
that the majority of its workforce owns shares, and the majority of
shares are owned by the workforce. Membership is not always compulsory
for employees, but generally only employees can become members either
directly (as shareholders) or indirectly through membership of a trust
that owns the company.
The impact of political ideology on practice constrains the
development of cooperatives in different countries. In India, there is a
form of workers' cooperative which insists on compulsory membership for
all employees and compulsory employment for all members. That is the
form of the
Indian Coffee Houses. This system was advocated by the Indian communist leader
A. K. Gopalan.In
places like the UK, common ownership (indivisible collective ownership)
was popular in the 1970s. Cooperative Societies only became legal in
Britain after the passing of Slaney's Act in 1852. In 1865 there were
651 registered societies with a total membership of well over 200,000.
There are now more than 400 worker cooperatives in the UK,
Suma Wholefoods being the largest example with a turnover of £24 million.
Volunteer cooperative
A volunteer cooperative is a cooperative that is run by and for a
network of volunteers, for the benefit of a defined membership or the
general public, to achieve some goal. Depending on the structure, it may
be a
collective or
mutual organization,
which is operated according to the principles of cooperative
governance. The most basic form of volunteer-run cooperative is a
voluntary association. A
lodge or
social club may be organized on this basis. A volunteer-run co-op is distinguished from a
worker cooperative in that the latter is by definition
employee-owned, whereas the volunteer cooperative is typically a
non-stock corporation, volunteer-run
consumer co-op or
service organization, in which workers and beneficiaries jointly participate in management decisions and receive discounts on the basis of
sweat equity.
Social cooperative
A particularly successful form of multi-stakeholder cooperative is
the Italian "social cooperative", of which some 7,000 exist. "Type A"
social cooperatives bring together providers and beneficiaries of a
social service as members. "Type B" social cooperatives bring together
permanent workers and previously unemployed people who wish to integrate
into the labor market. They are legally defined as follows:
- no more than 80% of profits may be distributed, interest is limited
to the bond rate and dissolution is altruistic (assets may not be
distributed)
- the cooperative has legal personality and limited liability
- the objective is the general benefit of the community and the social integration of citizens
- those of type B integrate disadvantaged people into the labour
market. The categories of disadvantage they target may include physical
and mental disability, drug and alcohol addiction, developmental
disorders and problems with the law. They do not include other factors
of disadvantage such as unemployment, race, sexual orientation or abuse.
- type A cooperatives provide health, social or educational services
- various categories of stakeholder may become members, including paid
employees, beneficiaries, volunteers (up to 50% of members), financial
investors and public institutions. In type B cooperatives at least 30%
of the members must be from the disadvantaged target groups1
- voting is one person one vote
Consumers' cooperative
A consumers' cooperative is a business owned by its customers.
Employees can also generally become members. Members vote on major
decisions and elect the board of directors from among their own number.
The first of these was set up in 1844 in the North-West of England by 28
weavers who wanted to sell food at a lower price than the local shops..
The world's largest consumers' cooperative is
the Co-operative Group
in the United Kingdom, which offers a variety of retail and financial
services. The UK also has a number of autonomous consumers' cooperative
societies, such as the
East of England Co-operative Society and
Mid-counties Co-operative.
In fact, the Co-operative Group is something of a hybrid, having both
corporate members (mostly other consumers' cooperatives, as a result of
its origins as a
wholesale society), and individual retail consumer members.
[citation needed]
Euro Coop is the European Community of Consumer Cooperatives.
Business and employment cooperative
Business and employment cooperatives (BEC's) are a subset of
worker cooperatives that represent a new approach to providing support
to the creation of new businesses.
Like other business creation support schemes, BEC's enable budding
entrepreneurs to experiment with their business idea while benefiting
from a secure income. The innovation BECs introduce is that once the
business is established the entrepreneur is not forced to leave and set
up independently, but can stay and become a full member of the
cooperative. The micro-enterprises then combine to form one
multi-activity enterprise whose members provide a mutually supportive
environment for each other.
BECs thus provide budding business people with an easy transition
from inactivity to self-employment, but in a collective framework. They
open up new horizons for people who have ambition but who lack the
skills or confidence needed to set off entirely on their own – or who
simply want to carry on an independent economic activity but within a
supportive group context.
New generation cooperative
New generation cooperatives (NGCs) are an adaptation of
traditional cooperative structures to modern, capital intensive
industries. They are sometimes described as a hybrid between traditional
co-ops and limited liability companies. They were first developed in
California and spread and flourished in the US
Mid-West in the 1990s.
[21] They are now common in Canada where they operate primarily in agriculture and food services, where their primary purpose is to
add value to
primary products. For example producing
ethanol from
corn,
pasta from
durum wheat, or
gourmet cheese from
goat’s milk.
Types and number of cooperatives
The top 300 largest cooperatives were listed in 2007 by the
International Co-operative Alliance.
80% were involved in either agriculture, finance, or retail and more
than half were in the United States, Italy, or France. In the United
States, cooperatives, particularly those in the Midwest, are analyzed at
the University of Wisconsin Center for Cooperatives.
Housing cooperative
A
housing cooperative is a legal mechanism for ownership of housing where residents either own
shares (share capital co-op) reflecting their equity in the cooperative's real estate, or have membership and occupancy rights in a
not-for-profit cooperative (non-share capital co-op), and they underwrite their housing through paying subscriptions or rent.
Housing cooperatives come in three basic equity structures
- In market-rate housing cooperatives, members may sell their
shares in the cooperative whenever they like for whatever price the
market will bear, much like any other residential property. Market-rate
co-ops are very common in New York City.
- Limited equity housing cooperatives, which are often used by affordable housing
developers, allow members to own some equity in their home, but limit
the sale price of their membership share to that which they paid.
- Group equity or zero-equity housing cooperatives do not allow members to own equity in their residences and often have rental agreements well below market rates.
Members of a building cooperative (in Britain known as a self-build
housing cooperative) pool resources to build housing, normally using a
high proportion of their own labor. When the building is finished, each
member is the sole owner of a homestead, and the cooperative may be
dissolved.
This collective effort was at the origin of many of Britain's
building societies, which however, developed into "permanent"
mutual savings and loan organisations, a term which persisted in some of their names (such as the former
Leeds Permanent). Nowadays such self-building may be financed using a step-by-step
mortgage which is released in stages as the building is completed.The term may also refer to worker cooperatives in the building trade.
Utility cooperative
A utility cooperative is a type of
consumers' cooperative that is tasked with the delivery of a
public utility such as
electricity,
water or
telecommunications services to its members.
Profits are either reinvested into
infrastructure or distributed to members in the form of "patronage" or "capital credits", which are essentially
dividends paid on a member's
investment
into the cooperative. In the United States, many cooperatives were
formed to provide rural electrical and telephone service as part of the
New Deal.
See Rural Utilities Service.
In the case of electricity, cooperatives are generally either
generation and transmission (G&T) co-ops that create and send power
via the transmission grid or local distribution co-ops that gather
electricity from a variety of sources and send it along to homes and
businesses.
In Tanzania, it has been proven that the cooperative method is
helpful in water distribution. When the people are involved with their
own water, they care more because the quality of their work has a direct
effect on the quality of their water.
Agricultural cooperative
Grain elevators are used by agricultural cooperatives in the storage and shipping of grains.
Agricultural cooperatives or farmers' cooperatives are cooperatives where
farmers pool their resources for mutual economic benefit. Agricultural cooperatives are broadly divided into
agricultural service cooperatives, which provide various services to their individual farming members, and
agricultural production cooperatives, where production resources such as land or machinery are pooled and members farm jointly.
[23] Known examples of agricultural production cooperatives are
Ocean Spray,
collective farms in
former socialist countries and the
kibbutzim in Israel.
Agricultural supply cooperatives aggregate purchases, storage, and
distribution of farm inputs for their members. By taking advantage of
volume discounts and utilizing other
economies of scale,
supply cooperatives bring down members' costs. Supply cooperatives may
provide seeds, fertilizers, chemicals, fuel, and farm machinery. Some
supply cooperatives also operate machinery pools that provide mechanical
field services (e.g., plowing, harvesting) to their members.
Agricultural marketing cooperatives provide the services involved in
moving a product from the point of production to the point of
consumption.
Agricultural marketing includes a series of inter-connected activities involving planning production, growing and
harvesting, grading, packing, transport, storage,
food processing, distribution and sale. Agricultural marketing cooperatives are often formed to promote specific commodities.
Commercially successful cooperatives include India's
Amul (dairy products),
Dairy Farmers of America (dairy products) in the United States, and Malaysia's
FELDA (
palm oil).
Credit unions, cooperative banking and Co-operative insurance
Credit unions are cooperative
financial institutions that are owned and controlled by their members. Credit unions provide the same
financial services as banks but are considered
not-for-profit organizations and adhere to
cooperative principles.
Credit unions originated in mid-19th century Germany through the efforts of pioneers
Franz Herman Schulze'Delitzch and
Friedrich Wilhelm Raiffeisen. The concept of financial cooperatives crossed the Atlantic at the turn of the 20th century, when the
caisse populaire movement was started by
Alphonse Desjardins in
Quebec,
Canada. In 1900, from his home in
Lévis, he opened North America's first credit union, marking the beginning of the
Mouvement Desjardins. Eight years later, Desjardins provided guidance for the first credit union in the
United States,
where there are now about 7,950 active status federally insured credit
unions, with almost 90 million members and more than $679 billion on
deposit.
Cooperative banking networks, which were nationalized in Eastern
Europe, work now as real cooperative institutions. A remarkable
development has taken place in Poland, where the
SKOK (
Spółdzielcze Kasy Oszczędnościowo-Kredytowe)
network has grown to serve over 1 million members via 13,000 branches,
and is larger than the country’s largest conventional bank.
In
Scandinavia, there is a clear distinction between
mutual savings banks (Sparbank) and true
credit unions (Andelsbank).
The oldest cooperative banks in Europe, based on the ideas of Friedrich Raiffeisen, are joined together in the 'Urgenossen'.
Federal or secondary cooperatives
In some cases, cooperative societies find it advantageous to form
cooperative federations
in which all of the members are themselves cooperatives. Historically,
these have predominantly come in the form of cooperative wholesale
societies, and cooperative unions. Cooperative federations are a means
through which cooperative societies can fulfill the sixth
Rochdale Principle,
cooperation among cooperatives, with the
ICA
noting that "Cooperatives serve their members most effectively and
strengthen the cooperative movement by working together through local,
national, regional and international structures."
Cooperative wholesale society
According to cooperative economist
Charles Gide,
the aim of a cooperative wholesale society is to arrange “bulk
purchases, and, if possible, organise production.” The best historical
example of this were the English CWS and the Scottish CWS, which were
the forerunners to the modern
Co-operative Group.
Cooperative union
A second common form of cooperative federation is a cooperative
union, whose objective (according to Gide) is “to develop the spirit of
solidarity among societies and... in a word, to exercise the functions
of a government whose authority, it is needless to say, is purely
moral.”
Co-operatives UK and the
International Cooperative Alliance are examples of such arrangements.
Cooperative political movements
In some countries with a strong
cooperative sector, such as the UK, cooperatives may find it
advantageous to form political groupings to represent their interests.
The British
Cooperative Party, the Canadian
Cooperative Commonwealth Federation and
United Farmers of Alberta are prime examples of such arrangements.
The
British cooperative movement formed the Cooperative Party in the early 20th century to represent members of
consumers' cooperatives in Parliament, which was the first of its kind. The
Cooperative Party now has a permanent electoral pact with the
Labour Party meaning someone cannot be a member if they support a party other than Labour.
[24] An alternative grouping, the
Conservative Co-operative Movement is open to people of all parties or none.
[24] Plaid Cymru also run a
credit union that is constituted as a co-operative, called the 'Plaid Cymru Credit Union.'
[25] UK cooperatives retain a strong market share in
food retail,
insurance, banking, funeral services, and the travel industry in many
parts of the country, although this is still significicantly lower than
other business models.
[26]
Women in cooperatives
Since cooperatives are based on values like
self-help,
democracy,
equality,
equity, and
solidarity, they can play a particularly strong role in empowering women, especially in developing countries.
[27] Cooperatives allow women who might have been isolated and working individually to band together and create
economies of scale as well as increase their own
bargaining power in the market. In statements in advance of
International Women's Day in early 2013, President of the
International Cooperative Alliance,
Dame Pauline Green,
said, "Cooperative businesses have done so much to help women onto the
ladder of economic activity. With that comes community respect,
political legitimacy and influence."
However, despite the supposed democratic structure of cooperatives and the values and benefits shared by members, due to
gender norms
on the traditional role of women, and other instilled cultural
practices that sidestep attempted legal protections, women suffer a
disproportionately low representation in cooperative membership around
the world. Representation of women through
active membership (showing up to meetings and voting), as well as in leadership and managerial positions is even lower.
[28]
Cooperatives in popular culture
As of 2012, the number of memberships in cooperatives reached one billion,
[29] and so the organizational structure and movement has seeped into popular culture.
In the
HBO drama television series
The Wire,
several drug dealers create a democratic alliance with the interests of
cutting back on violence and increasing business. This is called the "
New Day Co-Op."
Co-opoly: The Game of Cooperatives is a popular
board game played around the world that challenges players to work together to start and run a cooperative and overcome major hurdles.
[30][31]
My So-Called Housing Cooperative is a web series focusing on the humorous side of living in a housing co-op.
[32]
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- Europe, CICOPA. "About Us".
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- "Dr. William King and the Co-operator, 1828-1830,T. W. MERCER,OL6459685M
- Marlow, Joyce, The Tolpuddle Martyrs, London :History Book Club, (1971) & Grafton Books, (1985) ISBN 0-586-03832-9
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- "New Generation Cooperatives - 10 Things You Need to Know". Government of Alberta: Agriculture and Rural Development. Retrieved 25 December 2011.
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