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This chapter sets out to explore the relations between workplace democracy and environmental policy. While it is generally up to appointed executives to determine the scope of such policies and up to public relations manager to promote and implement them in conventional companies, some alternative business organizations provide living examples of how collective decision-making can give substance to sustainable production. As output and profit maximization contrasts more and more sharply with the growing awareness and experience among the population of the current ecological emergency, workers’ control over their own economic activity offers sensible perspectives for a radical reshaping of our modes of production. Worker co-operatives prove to be valuable living examples of how rank-and-file members’ empowerment can simultaneously advance social and ecological causes, as co-operators are both accountable to one another and the wider community.
The book brings together examples of co-operation and co-operatives from around Europe that investigate different instances of grass roots co-operative ventures on the ground. These examples are brought into the context of the 21st century as a contribution to socio-economic reflections on how Western society, principally in Europe but with possible transferability elsewhere, might best be able to confront the multiple crises of our times. The three parts of the book move, first, from co-operative case studies as individual ‘seeds’ for a possible future, second, through the transition necessary for culture change via co-operative education, to, third, the development of social systems that challenge the neoliberal status quo of society today. The book works on the premise that the social and economic systems that have been taken for granted for decades in the 20th century are being challenged in the 21st and that a move from competition to co-operation is needed to ensure future survival and prosperity.
Despite theories of degeneration and fears that the passing of time may corrupt the original principles of co-operation that are the very definition of a co-operative business, and the idea that co-operative democracy in governance declines as a result of growth in numbers of members of a co-operative, the co-operatives of Mondragon appear to both sustain themselves and continue to grow in different ways. Cornforth (1995) argued against theories of degeneration through a study of worker co-operatives in the UK, but the case of Mondragon is even more challenging in terms of size and longevity. Many predicted the beginning of the end for the Mondragon co-operatives after the fall into bankruptcy of the largest and the founding co-operative, Fagor Electrodomesticos, in 2013. Instead, the Mondragon Corporation is alive and well. This chapter asks what lessons can be learnt about the development and sustainability of co-operatives which are relevant for future planning and adaptations to new environments.
This volume explores where, how and why the cooperative model is having a distinctive, transformational impact in driving socio-economic changes in a post-pandemic 21st century world.
Drawing from a diverse range of examples, the book sheds light on how today’s cooperatives and a co-operative way of organising might serve new societal demands. It examines organisational structures and governance models that develop socio-economic resilience in cooperatives. The book’s contributors reveal how the very pursuit of cooperative values and principles challenges market fundamentalism and promotes participatory democracy.
This is a timely contribution to recent debates around transformative economies and an invaluable resource for scholars and activists interested in alternative ways of organising.
The Community Explorers project carried out by Leicester Vaughan College in 2019 was part of a major National Lottery-funded project aimed at addressing loneliness in older people. Part of the Co-operative Higher Education movement, Leicester Vaughan College ran this community research project, offering a small but useful pilot pointing to the value in co-operative practices and organizational formation in meeting complex social needs. Drawing on a bundle of co-operative pedagogies, and the ICA Co-operative Identity, the project enabled a broad range of individuals to become independent researchers. Explorers identified and researched issues of their own choosing across ten diverse projects with tailored training and support. This chapter argues that co-operation, co-operative pedagogies, and Education Co-operatives are a good match for Asset-Based Community Development (ABCD) projects, and offers potential value to a broad range of community development work.
The CWB initiative in the city of Preston in the North-West of England known as the ‘Preston Model’ (PM) focuses on leveraging local economic power and social value. Applying co-operative principles of economic democracy, resilience, environmental sustainability and social solidarity, it has improved Preston’s socio-economic outlook, through private and public sector partnerships. This chapter discusses how people in local ‘anchor institutions’ (major wealth creators and employers with a long local history) and the voluntary third sector, understand CWB and the PM. It is perceived as a holistic, inspirational narrative with great potential to affect broad social change, although its tangible impact is questioned. The absence of community representation in decision-making and implementation is also highlighted. This control by politics and local statutory bodies rather than the community, is seen as a barrier for the PM developing a true co-operative, democratic and participatory local economy and community.
Moving on from the penultimate chapter that sees possibilities of European-influenced cooperative systems to a Japanese context, the concluding chapter takes and informed forward-looking reflection on what has been discussed in the preceding chapters in the book. This chapter therefore acts as a final summary of the book as a whole and a consideration of what the future may hold in a cooperative context, both in practical and theoretical terms. In this chapter, the editors emphasize the larger questions that form the backdrop to the book and to a socio-economic future for Europe, questions such as the place and role of democracy, the possibility of co-operation becoming a means of governing a post-growth society, and where competition inherent in the capitalist world can seriously be challenged and replaced by the co-operation of a new beginning.
The chapter offers a ‘landscape review’ to reflect on the state-of-the-art assessment of the gap between competencies and knowledge needed to boost the role of the cooperative sector in a modern economy and the supply of research and training through higher education. It argues for the need to correct the focus of the education provision by universities and business schools to ensure a tighter fit with changing business conditions favouring plurality and new societal demands supporting participatory democracy. The chapter identifies related capabilities and skill shortages that need to be addressed and maintains that co-operatives should be more receptive to mainstream business and management education. The analysis lays foundations for international cross-sectoral initiatives that can be delivered by academia in collaboration with the cooperative sector.
This chapter argues that, by compelling workers to act in the interests of owners, customers and shareholders, work in hierarchical capitalist organizations frequently disconnects workers from their core values and from the communities in which they live. For workers, the result is a sense of estrangement from the self, and a weakening of social cohesion with both fellow worker and the wider community. In contrast to these experiences, it is argued that worker co-operatives can create opportunities for workers to reclaim and re-embed their values in the workplace and, through this, create work that is meaningful. Drawing on data collected from two worker co-operatives, the chapter will demonstrate how worker ownership and democratic member control can enable workers to cocreate meaningful work. In doing so it will show that meaning is derived, not only through doing work that is good for the interests of society, but through the messy and ongoing process of negotiating and enacting environmental and social values. As such, worker ownership and democratic control are framed as both a precursor to, and core component of, meaningful work.
The book brings together examples of co-operation and co-operatives from around Europe that investigate different instances of grass roots co-operative ventures on the ground. These examples are brought into the context of the 21st century as a contribution to socio-economic reflections on how Western society, principally in Europe but with possible transferability elsewhere, might best be able to confront the multiple crises of our times. The three parts of the book move, first, from co-operative case studies as individual ‘seeds’ for a possible future, second, through the transition necessary for culture change via co-operative education, to, third, the development of social systems that challenge the neoliberal status quo of society today. The book works on the premise that the social and economic systems that have been taken for granted for decades in the 20th century are being challenged in the 21st and that a move from competition to co-operation is needed to ensure future survival and prosperity.
