The Routledge Handbook of Cooperative Economics and Management

Cooperative non-profit social media for Canada - CoSocial Community Cooperative

CoSocial, officially CoSocial Community Cooperative, is a member-owned organization with the purpose of providing democratically-run open social media.

CommonsCloud – Eines lliures tecnoètiques cooperatives

Eines lliures tecnoètiques cooperatives

cooperative/Formation Documents at main · NorthskySocial/cooperative

Information about our Cooperative. Contribute to NorthskySocial/cooperative development by creating an account on GitHub.

Indigenous Cooperatives in Canada: The Complex Relationship between Cooperatives, Community Economic Development, Colonization, and Culture

This paper describes the intersection of the cooperative movement and Indigenous communities in Canada. The paper brings a lens of nation and race to an analysi

The Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT): Cooperative governance for network innovation, standards, and community

A PDF version of this book is available for free in open access via www.tandfebooks.com as well as the OAPEN Library platform, www.oapen.org. It has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 3.0 license and is part of the OAPEN-UK research project. This book traces the history and development of a mutual organization in the financial sector called SWIFT, the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication. Over the last forty years, SWIFT has served the financial services sector as proprietary communications platform, provider of products and services, standards developer, and conference organizer ("Sibos"). Founded to create efficiencies by replacing telegram and telex (or ‘wires’) for international payments, SWIFT now forms a core part of the financial services infrastructure. It is widely regarded as the most secure trusted third party network in the world serving 212 countries and over 10,000 banking organizations, securities institutions and corporate customers. Through every phase of its development, SWIFT has maintained the status of industry cooperative thus presenting an opportunity to study broader themes of globalization and governance in the financial services sector. In this book the authors focus on how the design and current state of SWIFT was influenced by its historical origins, presenting a comprehensive account in a succinct form which provides an informative guide to the history, structure, activities and future challenges of this key international organization. This work will be of great interest to students and scholars in a wide range of fields including IPE, comparative political economy, international economics, business studies and business history.

The corporation—a return to origins?

This paper contributes to contemporary debates in political theory about the power of business corporations by offering a genealogy of the corporation through the lens of a series of historical mutations of the corporate form. Originally, there were two corporate forms, both non-profit: member corporations (today's associations) and property corporations (today's charitable foundations). The contemporary business corporation arguably is a hybrid of both of these original forms, introducing unique commercial features (shares with profit distribution rights that are transferable). These commercial features are largely responsible for the corporation's extractive nature, that is, its tendency to prey on non-shareholder interests. The future of the corporation may well lie in a partial return to the two original non-profit forms. Two corporate forms developed in the nineteenth century can provide the format for such a return: cooperatives (which reinforce the idea of membership) and foundation-owned companies. The cooperative structure is a halfway house between a business corporation and a member corporation (association), and in a parallel fashion, a foundation-owned company is a halfway house between a business corporation and a property corporation (foundation). If we want to reduce corporations’ extractive nature, facilitating the spread of cooperatives and foundation-owned companies seems the way forward.

History Cooperative

Our modern world is shaped by the decisions, actions, and events of generations past. To understand who we are, explore how we got here at History Cooperative.

Managing and resisting ‘degeneration’ in employee-owned businesses: A comparative study of two large retailers in Spain and the United Kingdom

Employee-owned businesses have recently enjoyed a resurgence of interest as possible ‘alternatives’ to the somewhat tarnished image of conventional investor-owned capitalist firms. Within the context of global economic crisis, such alternatives seem newly attractive. This is somewhat ironic because, for more than a century, academic literature on employee-owned businesses has been dominated by the ‘degeneration thesis’. This suggested that these businesses tend towards failure—they either fail commercially, or they relinquish their democratic characters. Bucking this trend and offering a beacon—especially in the United Kingdom —has been the commercially successful, co-owned enterprise of the John Lewis Partnership whose virtues have seemingly been rewarded with favourable and sustainable outcomes. This article makes comparisons between John Lewis Partnership and its Spanish equivalent Eroski—the supermarket group which is part of the Mondragon cooperatives. The contribution of this article is to examine in a comparative way how the managers in John Lewis Partnership and Eroski have constructed and accomplished their alternative scenarios. Using longitudinal data and detailed interviews with senior managers in both enterprises, it explores the ways in which two large, employee-owned, enterprises reconcile apparently conflicting principles and objectives. The article thus puts some new flesh on the ‘regeneration thesis’.

A game of co-opetition: exploring the benefits of asset owner collaboration - Thinking Ahead Institute

It may seem like a hidden truth but the reality is that asset owners are in competition with each other. They are in competition for the best alpha ideas, the best manager products and the best research – all with the aim of improving risk-return trade-offs to increase the likelihood of meeting their liabilities. As a result, many asset owners find it difficult to collaborate, even in initiatives that may prove mutually beneficial. At the Thinking Ahead Institute’s recent Sydney roundtable event, asset owner attendees highlighted the top three barriers to successful peer collaboration: (1) difficulties being transparent; (2) lack of time and resources available; and (3) difficulties in aligning interests. At the same time, attendees agreed on the value to funds of collaborating productively on industry structure and regulation, and on a universal owner / alignment of interest agenda. 

meet.coop - The Online Meeting Cooperative

Online meeting and conferencing tools, powered by renewable energy running on cooperatively owned and managed infrastructure.

Coops 4 Coops

Your dedicated directory of cooperatives offering services to other cooperatives across Canada.

Co-operative Principles

Co-operatives around the world follow a set of principles based on principles drafted by the Rochdale Society of Equitable Pioneers in England in 1844. The modern co-operative movement is founded on the Rochdale Pioneers’ co-op model. Adherence to the principles is usually voluntary, but some principles inform the legislation on which co-operatives operate. For example, … Continued

From information free-riding to information sharing: how have humans solved the cooperative dilemma at the heart of cumulative cultural evolution?

Abstract. Cumulative cultural evolution, where populations accumulate ever-improving knowledge, technologies and social customs, is arguably a unique featu