Co-operatives

Direct payments enable individuals to purchase their own care rather than have directly provided services. This article unpacks the complexities involved in the implementation of direct payments by addressing the need to reconcile the strong evidence of their benefits with emerging concerns about the wider consequences of their implementation. One practice that highlights the conflicts at the heart of direct payments is the employment of personal assistants. While directly employing personal assistants offers maximum benefit for recipients, it also produces the strongest concerns.

Therefore, an understanding of the context of direct payments, specifically the practice of employing personal assistants, is used to explore these complexities in greater depth. The discussion concludes by arguing for a more critical awareness of the wider context in which direct payments are being developed in order to understand how this context can open up or limit opportunities for greater self-determination. It suggests a number of factors that need to be addressed to ensure that direct payments
continue to be a progressive strategy. These include reconciling conflicting ideologies such as those advocating individual choice and/or collective provision; the need for political action to secure adequate resources; and the development of alternative strategies such as cooperatives to address the collective needs of direct payment recipients and workers.

Key words: consumerism, cooperatives, personal assistants, selfdetermination,
user movement"

In urban communities, infrastructures that support living are indispensable. There is increased interest in alternative ways of providing such support systems, including semi-autonomous infrastructures resulting from the self-organization of local actors. In this study, we analyze the emergence and management of such infrastructures in light of the theory of complex adaptive systems, within which they are called ‘inverse infrastructures’. Empirical evidence is drawn from the case of water cooperatives in the town of Ikaalinen, Finland. Our analysis shows that, with favorable preconditions in place, inverse infrastructures may contribute significantly to local infrastructure services and so also to the functioning of society.

In heterodox economic geography, there is an ongoing debate as to how our economic, social, and environmental needs may be better addressed by organizing the economy differently, through more equitable and more sustainable practices. This calls for further studying and discussing alternative economic practices in a diverse economy. In this article, existing alternative economic practices within agrifood systems—specifically alternative forms of connecting producers and consumers—are explored, primarily on a conceptual but also an empirically grounded level. The article makes two conceptual contributions: First, it offers a comprehensive review of the literature and, with an emphasis on contributions by economic geographers, clarifies the meaning of alterity in alternative food systems. It reveals the hitherto limited focus on either alternative products or alternative distribution networks. In light of this limitation and the ongoing incorporation of characteristics of alternative food by conventional food industries for profit purposes, second, it extends those insights by reconceptualizing alterity—namely, by introducing alternative economic practices as an important third pillar of alternative food networks (AFNs). Empirically, by presenting two newly emerging models of AFNs from Berlin and Frankfurt—which go beyond just offering alternative food stuffs or using alternative distribution networks and instead aim at de-commodifying the food system—the article provides a closer view on existing alternative economic practices, highlighting the ways in which they think and perform the economy otherwise.
50 free online copies here: https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/YWYSSKGRDQIBHVNUAZMG/full?target=10.1080/00130095.2019.1701430

Ground-breaking examination of organizations founded on a social mission – social enterprises, non-profits, co-operatives, credit unions, and community development organizations. The second edition contains six new case studies as well three new chapters addressing leadership and strategic management, and human resources management.

An account of a widespread women's 'strike' against butchers' meat prices in the North East of England in 1872, with material on local political context and the extent to which the women's campaigns were influenced by trade unionism and demands for women's equality.

The minutes of the Hoito Restaurant, March 27, 1918 to May 2, 1920, translated and with an introduction - "The Origins of the Hoito Restaurant: A History from Below" - by Saku Pinta.

This work is a product of the 2018-2019 “Increasing Access to the Finnish-Language Archives” project, made possible by funding from the Library and Archives of
Canada (LAC) Documentary Heritage Community Programme (DHCP).

The central suggestion of this paper is that innovation in the concept of entrepreneurship is overdue and that the concept of entrepreneurship needs to be extended to accommodate its often neglected collective or pluralistic dimension, a concept termed “associative entrepreneurship”. It has also been argued that there may be a natural link between sustainability and the co-operative form. In this paper these themes are drawn together by considering the entrepreneurial potential expressed by the recent creation of mutual businesses in a range of renewable energy sectors in Wales. It is suggested that, at least in the renewable energy sector and perhaps in other sectors too, innovation in the direction of sustainability may require a development of the concept of entrepreneurship in the direction of mutualism.

Community-owned renewable energy (CRE) presents an opportunity for communities to strongly benefit from a transition from fossil fuel to clean energy (Devine-Wright, 2005; Walker, 2008; Rogers et al, 2012a). A type of CRE project, the energy co-operative (EC), combines the democratic and distributive nature of the co-operative enterprise with community-scale, decentralised renewable energy. This thesis investigates:

(a) why co-operatives today appear, from the point of view of their members, an attractive option for diffusing renewable energy options into society, while delivering social and environmental benefits; and

(b) how a particular energy co-operative is navigating a number of challenges in doing so.

To answer these questions, I conducted an ethnographic study of Ranges Energy Co-operative Limited (RE). My research involved 17 semi-structured interviews with key stakeholders from RE and local government. A grounded theory technique enabled an inductive and iterative analysis of over 18 hours of primary data.

Heightened concerns about the twin threats of climate change and economic consolidation of industry help answer the question of why co-operatives are emerging again as an energetic market force. The case of the Ranges Energy Co-operative suggests that the how is answered by a healthy blend of pragmatism – reflected in the business acumen and legal caution of the co-operative board – and idealism – as shown by the enthusiasm of all of the co-operative’s members. Their unique but replicable implementation model navigates many common barriers to community-scale distributed energy development, and thus may be critical in encouraging a shift in the focus of current literature, and in the subsequent uptake of community-level energy solutions, from ‘barriers and challenges’, to ‘innovative implementation’.

Le présent article a pour objectif d’évaluer la fonction marketing au sein des coopératives artisanales marocaines.
Pour ceci, nous avons mené une enquête auprès de 30 coopératives artisanales relevant de la région de Rabat-Salé.
Les résultats obtenus montrent que la démarche marketing est peu valorisée au sein de ces coopératives ce qui entrave la commercialisation de leurs produits. Pour dépasser cette difficulté, nous proposons des recommandations sous forme de plan d’actions.

Co-operative Society is a voluntary association started with the aim of rendering service of its members. It is a form of business where individuals belonging to the same class join their hands for the promotion of their common goals. These are generally formed by the poor people or weaker section people in the society. “It reflects the desire of the people to stand on their own legs. The philosophy of the formation of Co-operative Society is “All for each and each for all”.
Bangladesh is a developing country and agriculture is the main largest sector of the economy. About 80% people are directly or indirectly depended on the agriculture for their livelihood. This sector Contributes 35.47% to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and this sector provides about 63% employment for the workforce. Most of the farmers are illiterate and for that reason they do not have the ability to sell their products to the final consumers. Consequently, middlemen are playing marketing role and due to this reason, farmer are not getting fair price for their products. Ministry of local Government & Cooperative Society can play vital role to bring forming within the framework of Cooperative Society and can minimize the role of middlemen of marketing agricultural products of Bangladesh. Majority of farmers did not have any knowledge about farmer’s Cooperative Society in this regard. It was also revealed that 88% farmers were depended on the middlemen for the marketing their products and 94% farmers did not get fair price from the middlemen.

This case study on a housing co-operative in Toronto and its historic buildings explores liveability and sustainability in multi-residential housing. It includes an analysis of the history of co-operative housing in Canada, public health and housing, and housing design methodologies that contribute to liveability and sustainability. Eco-social aspects of affordable housing design and the co-operative tenure model, as well as the aspects of housing that can contribute to human resiliency in a changing climate are also discussed. Primary data is drawn from resident questionnaires, expert interviews, and the author’s first-hand experience as a member-resident of Bain Co-op. This paper considers the archi-cultural significance of Bain Co-op’s housing built in the Arts and Crafts style, as one of the first social housing developments in Canada, and its associations with socialist, naturalist, and British colonial identities.

This research serves to highlight the potential for planning to facilitate mutually supportive interactions between social networks, built form and natural environments. It also documents a long-standing residential development and community that has proven its sustainability over time, and serves as a reference for community groups practicing in residential architecture, landscape design, co-working/living, and community development. Results from this inquiry have potential applications for future housing developments of both private, public, co-operative and other tenure models.

A second joint report published by co-operatives UK and the Co-operative College. Building on the "Not Alone" report, it looks in more depth at trade union and co-operative solutions to the difficulties of the precariat from around the world

This chapter examines this phenomenon of ERTs in Latin American countries, with a special emphasis on the case of Argentina. Based on our ongoing quantitative and qualitative political economic and ethnographic work over the past five years with over 70 ERTs across all economic sectors and regions, we highlight two particular characteristics that are often overlooked or downplayed by studies that examine worker-recovered enterprises in Argentina. First, workers’ initial actions involving the seizure of control of their deteriorating or failed companies from former owners, their occupation of them for weeks or months, and eventually their putting them into operation once again under autogestión (self-management), arise out of fear and anger rather than a preconceived predilection for workers’ control or working-class revolt. That is, most ERTs originate as direct responses to their worker-protagonists’ deep worries about becoming structurally unemployed. To begin to understand these two characteristics, we first briefly look to the historical and political conjunctures from which ERTs emerge and in which they find themselves. We then explore some of the distinguishing features of Argentina’s ERTs as workers’ co-operatives. To illustrate how these features play out in practice, we map out some of the innovations impelled by ERT workers’ desire to self-manage that they adopt in order to defend their jobs and workspaces, as well as several of the challenges faced by these experiments in self-management. Lastly, we examine some of the connections with the wider ERT phenomenon in South America. As we emphasize throughout, ERT’s innovations and challenges shape their very organizational structures and co-operative practices and in some ways distinguish them from other workers’ co-operatives in other conjunctures.

The bluefin tuna fishery has undergone a major shift in Malta, moving from an open access artisanal nature to a privatized and industrialized activity dominated by the purse seining fleet and the BFT ranching industry. The shift has been exacerbated by the national implementation of an individual transferable quota system, which has enabled the concertation of quotas into fewer hands. The main objective of this article is to understand how privatization has evolved within the sector and the way the Maltese artisanal fishermen are experiencing the shift. This study takes an exploratory mixed-method approach to quantitatively and qualitatively understand how policy underpinnings interplay with the sustainability dimension of the small-scale fishing sector. Results show that the transition of the bluefin tuna fishery from artisanal to industrial has generated a legitimacy crisis over fishing rights, decreased profitability amongst most of the artisanal fleet, and led to a series of socio-ecological impacts on the artisanal fisheries system at large. It is concluded that the neo-liberal trajectories of industrialization have directly undermined the continued sustainability of artisanal fishing communities.

In the United Republic of Tanzania, producer organizations such as agricultural co-operatives have the potential to improve the economic position of small-scale farmers by strengthening their engagement in markets and improving overall agricultural production. However, the advantages associated with the co-operative model have not resulted in equal outcomes and opportunities for all, particularly women as they face structural barriers and inequities limiting their ability to join, participate and benefit from agricultural co-operatives. This research contributes to a growing body of knowledge on gender, participation, and empowerment in agricultural co-operatives by questioning how and to what extent women’s participation is related to their sense of empowerment in various aspects of their lives. In order to address this question, I employ Narayan’s (2005) conceptual framework of empowerment to guide the research in combination with Agarwal’s (2001) typology of participation in member-based organizations as complementary tools for understanding the barriers and opportunities associated with women’s participation and empowerment in agricultural co-operatives. This paper furthers the argument that women’s participation in agricultural co-operatives is constrained by participatory exclusions embedded within a wider social construct of gender relations that serve to maintain rather than challenge inequitable gender structures and processes.
Keywords: Gender, women, participation, empowerment, agriculture, co-operatives, coffee, Tanzania

Cooperative practices and values that challenge the status quo while, at the same time, creating alternative modes of economic, cultural, social, and political life have emerged with dynamism in recent years. The 15 articles in this issue of _Affinities_--written by activists, coop practitioners, theorists, historians, and researchers--begin to make visible some of the myriad modes of cooperation existing today around the world that both directly respond to new enclosures and crises and show pathways beyond them. Prefiguring other possibilities for organizing life and provisioning for our needs and desires, we call these cooperative experiments "the new cooperativism."

Table of Contents for the Affinities issue on 'The New Cooperativism' (Guest edited by Marcelo Vieta)

Editorial

The New Cooperativism HTML PDF
Marcelo Vieta

Historicizing and Theorizing the New Cooperativism

The Cooperative Movement in Century 21
John Curl

Commons and Cooperatives
Greig de Peuter, Nick Dyer-Witheford

Sisyphus and the Labour of Imagination: Autonomy, Cultural Production, and the Antinomies of Worker Self-Management
Stevphen Shukaitis

A Buzz between Rural Cooperation and the Online Swarm
Andrew Gryf Paterson

The Sangham Strategy: Lessons for a Cooperative Mode of
Production
Sourayan Mookerjea

Practicing the New Cooperativism

Decomposition and Suburban Space
Conor Cash
Justseeds Artists' Cooperative
Dara Greenwald

Solidarity Food Economies?
J Howard

Cooperatives and the 'Bolivarian Revolution' in Venezuela
Tom Malleson

Social Centres and the New Cooperativism of the Common
Andre Pusey

The New University Cooperative: Reclaiming Higher Education: Prioritizing Social Justice and Ecological Sustainability
E. Wilma van der Veen

Researching the New Cooperativism
Recycling Technologies and Cooperativism: Waste-for-Life
Caroline Baillie, Eric Feinblatt

Italian Social Cooperatives and the Development of Civic Capacity: A Case of Cooperative Renewal?
Vanna Gonzales

The Universe of Worker-Recovered Companies in Argentina (2002-2008): Continuity and Changes Inside the Movement
Héctor Palomino, Ivanna Bleynat, Silvia Garro, Carla Giacomuzzi

Praxis, Learning, and New Cooperativism in Venezuela: An Initial Look at Venezuela's Socialist Production Units
Manuel Larrabure

This short section of the book Other Cinemas, acts as a factual overview of the Workshop Declaration of 1982. This was an agreement between the newly established Channel 4 (C4) and the trade union, the Association of Cinematograph, Television and Allied Technicians (ACTT), created through consultation with the Independent Film-Makers’ Association (IFA), the British Film Institute (BFI) and Britain’s Regional Arts Associations. As the Workshop Declaration and some of the groups it funded are mentioned in other contributions to the anthology as well as in other publications, with little factual explanation of it, this short supplementary section (1,200 words) acts as an important overview, and was written following a series of interviews with Simon Blanchard, Sylvia Harvey and Rod Stoneman.

https://eprints.kingston.ac.uk/id/eprint/36199/

After several years of economic crisis, people are increasingly demanding more socially responsible economic activities rather than speculation, and better distribution of social wealth. This structural crisis is encouraging some groups to use their common resources to self organise local services in order to mitigate public sector withdrawal and market failures. In Italy, community co-operatives are emerging as bottom-up initiatives for local commons preservation and use, regeneration of community assets, management of quasi-public services, and production of goods for community development projects. Community co-operatives are thus concretising many of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), promoting, for instance, clean energy production and use, opportunities for decent jobs, more equitable forms of economic development, innovative ways to regenerate infrastructures and local assets, and the provision of services for communities in marginal areas or critical situations. This paper presents findings from an ongoing qualitative research project aiming to better understand the
territorial and economic development impacts of Italian community co-operatives. It does so by illustrating their main features via data gathered during multiple site visits and interviews of cooperative members conducted throughout 2018. The paper considers three case studies in
different sectors and regions of Italy, with an eye toward their efficacy for implementing the SDGs

A report detailing the needs of the precarious self employed, and co-operative and trade union solutions to their needs.
The report includes case studies on solutions already operating in the USA and Europe, and makes recommendations relevant to the UK employment situation.

Much has been written about the disruptive effect of digital technologies on the music industries since the emergence of the peer-to-peer file-sharing network Napster in 1999. This literature review takes as its starting point that the challenge facing the music industries – an example of what Christensen and Raynor (2003) call ‘disruptive innovation’ – is primarily one of business models, rather than technology. In reviewing the literature on collaborative, co-operative and collective business models, I aim to identify and define key terms; to cite the various collective, co-operative and collaborative models in the music industries that have been cited by journalists; to analyse their underlying business models as far as possible; and to define the parameters of future research. Although it is only in its early stages, I identify Imogen Heap’s Mycelia – a new collaborative model that, with its pioneering use of blockchain technology, represents a new economic model – as perhaps the most promising possibility for the future.

Smart City Citizenship provides rigorous analysis for academics and policymakers on the participatory processes and practices of smart cities to help integrate ICT-related innovation into urban life. Unlike other smart city books that are often edited collections, this book focuses on the business domain and the technological disruptions themselves, also examining the role of citizens and the democratic governance issues raised from an interdisciplinary perspective. As smart city research is a fast-growing topic of scientific inquiry and evolving rapidly, this book is an ideal reference for a much needed discussion.

To cite this book:

Calzada, I. (2021), Smart City Citizenship, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Elsevier Science Publishing Co Inc. ISBN-10: 0128153008 ISBN-13: 978-0128153000. doi: 10.1016/c2017-0-02973-7.

Further information:

https://www.elsevier.com/books/smart-city-citizenship/calzada/978-0-12-815300-0

https://www.amazon.com/Smart-City-Citizenship-Igor-Calzada-dp-0128153008/dp/0128153008/ref=mt_other?_encoding=UTF8&me=&qid=1592420565

This thesis investigates the employment of personal assistants (PAs) by disabled individuals in the UK. Personal assistance is considered to be one of the most essential services necessary for disabled people to achieve ‘independent living’, and as such the right to directly employ PAs and to receive the funding needed to do so has been a central campaign objective of the Disabled People’s Movement (DPM) in the UK and elsewhere. However, both the employment of PAs and the concept of ‘independent living’ contain contradictions. Waged employment has been identified as a source of disabled people’s oppression, but in the personal assistance relationship it is treated as a means to their emancipation. The concept of ‘independence’ within the DPM framing of ‘independent living’ can be equated to autonomy, but the autonomy of disabled people is arguably achieved at the expense of that of PAs as workers. Semi-structured qualitative interviews with both PAs and disabled employers of PAs were used to attempt to gain new insight into these contradictions. Topics covered in these interviews included the relationships between PAs and employers, their interaction with other social relationships, the occupational status of PAs and possible ways to improve it, and barriers to the implementation of personal assistance as it was envisaged by the DPM. Both PAs and their employers are severely impacted by the political economics of austerity and the cultural devaluation of ‘dependence’ and the labour associated with it. Potential exists for organising personal assistance in ways other than direct employment of PAs by individuals, such as through co-operatives or informal collective models. However, all of these have advantages and disadvantages compared with direct employment. The thesis concludes with recommendations for policy, for further research and for action priorities within the DPM on personal assistance.

Canada is known for being an energy-producing nation – with much attention being paid to the Alberta tar sands and their large carbon footprint. This book looks at a very different part of the Canadian energy sector: the hundreds of renewable energy co-ops that have sprung up across the nation. These co-ops are democratically structured, community-based organizations that use sun, wind, rivers, tides, and plant and animal waste as sources of local power generation.

Empowering Electricity offers an illuminating analysis of these co-ops within the context of larger debates over climate change, renewable electricity policy, sustainable community development, and provincial power-sector ownership. It looks at the conditions that led to this new wave of co-operative development, examines their form and location, and shines a light on the promises and challenges accompanying their development.

Дис. д-ра екон. наук: 08.05.01 / Київський нац. ун-т імені Тараса Шевченка. – Київ, 2002. – 492 арк. 

Honcharenko V.V. Formation of the world credit cooperatives’ system: theory, methodology, practice: Dissertation of Doctor of Economic Sciences: 08.05.01 / Kyiv National Taras Shevchenko University. - Kyiv, 2002. - 492 p.
Theoretical and practical aspects of cooperatives' activity as a unique non-profitable form of economic self-help of people (including crediting) are researched in the dissertation. Peculiarities of historical models of credit cooperatives, their national modifications, and multilevel national systems have been determined. Various types of credit cooperatives (credit unions, cooperative banks, rural cooperatives, etc.), peculiarities of their origin and regularities of development in different countries and in different historical periods are described. Financial mechanism, specifics of management, tendencies of development in different historical, political and economic conditions are considered in detail. Cooperation between national systems of credit cooperatives at the international level is shown.
Keywords : cooperative, types of cooperatives, cooperative principles, credit union, cooperative bank, cooperative system, international cooperative movement, credit cooperative

El presentes trabajo pretende analizar las políticas públicas de fomento del cooperativismo de trabajo en Uruguay. Se analizan los programas más significativos de promoción de cooperativas de trabajo por parte del gobierno nacional y la municipalidad de Montevideo entre 1976 y 2006.

In tumultuous times of financial crisis, capitalism is increasingly challenged as a desirable economic system. But are there any realistic alternatives to capitalism? Using theory and empirical research, this article offers one model of alternative business organization, focusing on not-for-profit cooperatives. If capitalism’s distinctive features are private property, profit, and (intra-market) competition, cooperatives can, if designed intelligently, function without these features.

http://rrp.sagepub.com/content/47/2/141.abstract

The Argentine worker-recuperated enterprises (empresas recuperdas por sus trabajadores, or ERT) are direct, diverse, and mostly non-union aligned responses by roughly 10,000 urban-based workers to recent socio-economic crises. Over ten years since the first workplace occupations and their recoveries as self-managed workers' cooperatives, this latest wave of workers’ struggle in Argentina has shown promising alternatives to capital-labour relations and the neoliberal enclosures of life.

But why were almost 200 failing, closed, or bankrupted small- and medium-sized businesses spanning the entire urban economic base subsequently occupied and reopened as self-managed workplaces by former employees in Argentina since at least 1997? Why do most ERTs decide to reorganize themselves as workers’ cooperatives? Why do many of them also decide to open up the shop floor to the diverse communities surrounding them, symbolically and practically tearing down factory walls by sharing their workplaces with community centres and dining halls, free clinics, popular education programmes, alternative radio and media centres, and art studios? Finally, why Argentina?

To begin to answer these questions, I first explore some of Argentina’s key socio-economic and historical conjunctures motivating workspace occupations and the formation of self-managed workers’ cooperatives. Second, I begin to theorize the concept of autogestión (self-management) as it tends to be practiced by Argentina’s ERTs. Third, I sketch out some of the ERTs’ most common micro-economic and organizational successes and challenges, exploring how the struggle to reconstitute a once capitalist workplace as a self-managed workers’ coop interplays with an ERT’s reconstituted labour processes. I conclude by appraising the future possibilities of ERTs for social transformation in Argentina by mapping out four “social innovations” being spearheaded by the phenomenon.

I want to explore the wider, critical and creative powers of education to bring about a society where no one person is valued more than another and where each person is celebrated for their differences - in short,  the society of equals.  I argue that discourses of equality are not only co-extensive with democracy, they are coextensive with co-operation and education.  The extent to which equalities between people are limited to certain spheres of activity is also the limit to which democracy and co-operation are exercised in the affairs of everyday life.  To what extent are democracy and co-operation evidenced in schools, colleges and universities - the supposedly privileged places for the development of people’s powers?  In whose interests and for what purposes are those powers to be developed?   And how may socially just democratic futures be realised through co-operative forms of education?

Le développement de la coopération en Ukraine est adossé à l'idée nationale, d'où l'essor remarquable du mouvement dès la seconde moitié du XIXe siècle et jusqu'à l'instauration du régime communiste. Le mouvement coopératif, comme le montre cet article, représentait une menace pour le pouvoir communiste, qui n'eut alors de cesse de le détruire, recréant en parallèle de pseudo-coopératives, à l'image des kolkhozes, dépouillées des véritables principes coopératifs. La période de la "perestroïka" ne fit par la suite que jeter un nouveau discrédit sur l'idée coopérative. C'est dans ce contexte que l'Ukraine, état indépendant depuis 1991, tente de restaurer les conditions d'un développement coopératif. A l'aube de l'an 2000, qu'en est-il de la situation dans les différents secteurs ? http://www.recma.org/article/le-mouvement-cooperatif-en-ukraine-histoire-et-renaissance

Social Accounting is an instrument of measuring organizational performance that takes a comprehensive approach (usually including social, environmental and economic factors). Conventional financial accounting is increasingly seen as insufficient in revealing the full picture of a business’ performance (Mook 22; Mook and Sumner 160). By ignoring negative social/environmental externalities, conventional accounting (CA) influences our values and behavior – directing our attention only to financial performance and not other factors. Using academic literature, I investigate the core issues of conventional and social accounting, and especially the latter’s ability to produce genuine sustainability data that is of high quality. The specific SA systems that will be analyzed below are the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) and the Consumer Co-operative Sustainability and Planning Scorecard. There are serious criticisms, which I outline below, of GRI and GRI-like systems as mere management tools intended to protect corporate brands. Although SA systems may face credibility issues because, for example, they allow high flexibility in terms of material issue selection, it is also true that civil society stakeholders have not shown enough interest in using them or trying to make these systems more reliable. Co-operative enterprises claim to have broader objectives than just financial success, which makes them and Social Accounting apt for each other, according to some scholars. Using empirical data from an online survey and in-depth interviews of co- operatives in Ontario, I explore the obstacles co-operatives face in implementing SA systems, which include costs, time requirements, lack of understanding of its benefits, and others.

This report sets out to review the experiences, innovations and challenges of new non-financial co-operatives in Canada. The research questions guiding this research are the following:

1) How have non-financial co-operatives in recent years from across Canada’s provinces and territories and in different economic sectors, sought to meet their members’ or communities’ social/cultural/economic/environmental needs via the co-operative model?

2) Why is the co-operative model chosen over other business types?

3) What are the challenges faced in starting-up or further developing a non-financial co-operative and why and how do non-financial co-operatives succeed or fail to overcome these challenges?

4) What innovations have new non-financial co-operatives forged in order to offer both members and surrounding communities new or better ways of provisioning for their social/economic/cultural/environmental needs?

To answer these questions, we have tapped into an illustrative sample of new and emerging co-operatives that were involved with the Co-operative Development Initiative (CDI) from 2009-2013. To gather and analyze our data, a mixed-methods, and grounded theory methodology was used, including survey, interviews and focus groups.

On the whole, we found a predominance of socially focused motivators and needs driving the startup of new co-operatives in Canada from our research sample. Collectively across Canada, for instance, social care and social services, alternative health care, alternative and organic food, alternative and renewable energy, community economic development (CED) and offering employment for marginalized communities made up a total of 62.2% of interests and motivators for the creation of new co-ops in our sample. These are what co-operative founders and members saw as lacking in their communities and what drove their co-operative business.

When we filtered the motivations for starting a co-operative through the goods and services produced or delivered, we again explicitly found a strong, outward, socially focused direction to new co-operative development in our sample, again suggesting that many of Canada’s new co-ops are created to deliver socially useful goods and services rather than being only motivated to meeting member needs or business interests. Many of the new co-operatives in our sample were thus also social enterprises—that is firms that rely on some market activity but with strong social missions aimed to deliver particular goods and services to communities. Since there is no formal legislation or broadly agreed upon nomenclature for conceptualizing these types of co-operatives in Canada, we call them for this report Canada’s “social mission-driven co-operatives.”

While many of the new co-operatives in our sample from across Canada are motivated by and are actually delivering socially focused goods and services of benefit to multiple community stakeholders beyond just the co-op’s members, new Canadian co-ops are also experiencing a common set of challenges. These include: (1) lack of knowledge by co-op founders of the specifics of the co-operative model; (2) lack of resources for, or knowledge of where to access start-up funds and funds for ongoing business consolidation and growth; (3) human resources issues (i.e., possible volunteer burnout, membership and staffing engagement, division of labour issues, retention and motivation, etc.); and (4) organizational issues related to governance.

Moreover, we noticed four major “paradoxes” emerging with new Canadian co-operatives in our sample, suggestive of the tensions present with developing and consolidating new co-operative initiatives today:

1) the paradox of external funding: the need to pursue supportive and external sources of funding to supplement revenues and start or sustain new projects vs. the time it takes to pursue it, possibly taking a co-op away from the daily tasks of running the business while not guaranteeing returns;

2) the paradox of participative decision-making and governance: decision-making and governance viewed as a distinguishing feature and strength of co-ops vs. the competitive disadvantages democratic governance brings at times when quick and decisive decisions are needed, especially in competitive markets;

3) the paradox of member engagement and diversity: the importance placed on maximizing member engagement and diversity vs. issues affecting fluid governance, decision-making, and business actions brought on by conflicting member interests, needs, or ideas; and

4) the paradox of volunteering: the recognition that much of the work that happens in co-ops is volunteer labour vs. the burn-out and difficulties that emerge from the fact that a core and often small group of members do most of the volunteering.

For overcoming some of these difficulties and tensions and for assisting in getting new co-operatives off the ground, the new co-ops in our sample relied much on the expertise and guidance of co-operative developers. Over 54% of new co-op projects from our survey sample tapped into the expertise of a co-operative developer at some point. Moreover, almost all co-ops from our sample that did use co-op developers said that the developer completed their tasks successfully and were happy with the support they had received from them.

Besides co-op developers, other major supports for new co-ops in our sample from across Canada included: community economic development initiatives, other co-operatives, financial institutions such as credit unions (particularly in the founding stages, but not as much when the co-operative is operational), and perhaps most tellingly, individuals such as visionary leaders or groups of leaders who often become the co-op’s founders. The latter points to a strong presence of “collective entrepreneurialism” across Canada’s new co-ops and, again, to the importance of co-operative developers.

This study also found evidence for the strong role of learning in the new co-operatives in our sample. This learning is mostly informal and “learning-by-doing,” underscoring the inherent “associative intelligence” that the co-operative form fosters for acquiring the skills, values, and practices needed to run a co-operative, work with others collaboratively, and engage with their social missions and the community. Again, co-operative developers also play a strong educational role regards members’ take up of co-operative values, principles, governance, and in how to deal with business issues. However, the use of formal learning via courses and at the college level remains very minimal with new Canadian co-operators, our data evidenced.

Emerging from the findings of this research, this report concludes with seven major recommendations for the co-operative movement, social economy organizations and policy makers to best help support new co-operative development in Canada:

1) Design a comprehensive strategic plan and approach to support new co-operatives in Canada, which has input and buy-in of all key stakeholders (co-operatives, support organizations and different levels of government).

2) Develop a national clearinghouse for co-operative development, including appropriate legislation, funding sources, networks and networking opportunities, and useful community linkages.

3) Create specific capacity building strategies to be delivered by key co-operative stakeholders, from start-up through the early stages of co-operative development, and focussing on associative skills, leadership, business management, financial capacity, and partnerships/networking.

4) Co-ordinate and build-up the activities of key supportive co-operative organisations in order to nurture skills, to provide sustained support, and to raise awareness of the needs of new co-operatives.

5) Provide further supports to co-operative developers to network, share and work together in order to keep their knowledge and skills current and up-to-date.

6) Design and implement program support that is specific to the reality and needs of new co-operatives in Canada.

7) Support the creation of more formal education outlets and co-operative knowledge mobilization initiatives in all provinces for co-operative members, managers, volunteers, other stakeholders, and the general public and policymakers.