Globalization, Co-op Style

In the early 1900s, fishing and farming families throughout Atlantic Canada came together in study circles, often around their kitchen tables, to learn about their economy. The families used a curriculum developed by men and women connected to St. Francis Xavier University in Antigonish, Nova Scotia.

The study circle curriculum explained how the people's wealth was being extracted by middlemen who lived elsewhere, but who owned the means to turn the farmers' and fishers' commodities into 'value-added' products even as other middlemen were selling them their agricultural inputs, fuel, food, and other consumer goods at the highest prices possible.

This powerful adult education effort led to the creation of hundreds of co-ops and credit unions across the region, which, through their economies of scale and commitment to mutual benefit, eliminated the middlemen. Alongside other cooperatives, credit unions, and 'caisses populaires' started by Francophone Canadians, the Antigonish movement nurtured a strong cooperative culture that continues today. It is fitting that this region should be the birthplace of the first English language master's degree program in co-op management; a set of courses focused on helping co-op businesses succeed — not by embedding them in the dominant economic model — but by shaping an alternative model rooted in the recognized values and principles of cooperatives.

The Master of Management - Cooperatives and Credit Unions (MMCCU) program operates from St. Mary's University in Halifax. It was formed by a partnership between the university and an international co-op of cooperatives and associations.

The faculty and student body also come from around the world. Students work for co-ops and credit unions of all sizes. Some students have years of experience and some are fairly new to the job. MMCCU master's candidates spend an orientation week together in Halifax, then return to their home co-ops or other sponsoring organizations. From there, they telecommunicate with team members, teachers and other classmates on a daily basis. Halfway through the program, which typically takes a little more than three years, they meet for an intensive 10-day study tour in a 'co-op epicenter' such as Mondragon, Spain or Emilia Romagna, Italy.

The program has all the necessary nuts and bolts education that a 21st century business manager requires, but it's embedded in the ten co-op values and seven co-op principles as ratified in 1995 by the International Cooperative Alliance (see box). These values and principles inform the behavior of an increasing number of co-op leaders around the world who see a need to develop alternatives to an economic model of investor-owned globalization that is harmful to human beings and other life forms, including the planet on which all life depends.

For instance, when it comes to food, most people think about it from a consumer's point of view — "I want to pay the lowest cost for my milk" — while a few think of it from a producer's perspective, wanting to get the highest price.

"This doesn't reflect the cooperative value of interdependence," says Tom Webb. "There's a logic that drives you to look for the highest quality and the lowest price. What they ought to be asking is, 'What if farmers and consumers were committed to treat each other fairly?' Or, 'If we were going to find a way to provide ourselves and our children's children with the things we need to live, that wouldn't destroy the natural world of which we are a part, how would we do that?'"

Referring to the Rochdale Society of Pioneers, considered the first modern cooperative — a handful of oppressed mill workers who got together to supply their own store with safe food in the nightmarish world of Charles Dickens' England — Tom points out, "The origins of the modern cooperative came from the squalor of the Industrial Revolution. People stepped back and said, 'These aren't the values that underlie our lives. If we were going to run our own store, what would we never allow to happen to each other?'"

"And out of the ugliness of Franco bombing Basque Spain," he goes on to say, "came the idea that work should express how we contribute to the world around us." He is referring to the huge, integrated system of predominantly worker-owned cooperatives in northern Spain known as the Mondragon Cooperative Corporation.

"One of our challenges is to take that bend of thought — Mondragon, Emilia Romagna, Rochdale — and ask what global cooperation should look like today. Would people in India and Africa be paying tens of thousands of dollars for drugs [Ed. Note: because of drug patents enforced by the drug companies and the WTO] that cost fifty cents [to produce]?"

On the other hand, Tom says, take a look at US credit unions (which are legally structured financial service co-ops owned by their member-depositors). "Do they go over to India and charge people hundreds of dollars to buy the credit unions' ideas and technology? No, they go over and help set up dairy co-ops."

But he underlines that in order for cooperatives to realize their potential, they need better tools to evaluate how managing cooperatively makes for more successful cooperative businesses. The multiple bottom lines that define a successful cooperative require multiple approaches to measuring what each type of success looks like.

"It's hard to sell that kind of innovation," he notes, but he also knows that there are places where this shift in management of cooperatives is making measurable differences. One outstanding example is in the United Kingdom. The Midcounties Co-op redesigned one of its supermarkets last year. They placed touch-screens all over the store. The screens run 15-, 30- and 60-second informational clips, of, for example, an interview with a Ghana-based cocoa farmer. Studies show that well above half the people saw at least one message as they went through the store. This innovation brought a rise in sales per square foot as well.

Tom Webb stresses the importance of encouraging students to adopt a "… cooperative paradigm. This is how it's done in a regular business. How is it done in a co-op or credit union? How would we design a store differently? How would we treat workers differently? How would we do the accounting or the marketing differently?"

"There is no perfect cooperative. We need to be asking, 'What are the new, innovative approaches that are even more consistent with our values? If we had workers and consumers sitting at the same table with the problems on the table rather than under it, would that help?'"

Tom Webb voices an opinion that is gaining popularity with many in the co-op world. "Some version of the stakeholder model is the solution — that's the real cutting edge of cooperative development. The biggest obstacle is that managers can't figure out how to do it yet. Their thinking is still too firmly rooted in the investor-owned model." He proposes forming boards of directors composed of workers, consumers, and producers where "every topic is discussed, where there is a basis of trust, and no conflict of interest because everyone there represents the co-op."

"The power of the cooperative business alternative is that it can nurture what is best in people and enable us to meet our needs in ways in which everyone wins — consumers, workers, producers, and ultimately, families and communities."

In such a world, there is no place for the violence that is inherent in competitive, greed-fueled, "buyer beware" economics.