Monthly Archives: February 2017

Harold Chapman, Order of Canada 2016

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Nora Russell

We are thrilled to acknowledge long-time Centre supporter Harold Chapman’s investiture into the Order of Canada! Harold has been a stalwart of the Centre for years, a devoted attendee of our conferences, workshops, and seminars and always among the first to comment, share experiences, and make suggestions about initiatives the Centre might usefully undertake in the future.

Harold Chapman

We recently worked with Harold to co-publish his memoir, Sharing My Life: Building the Co-operative Movement, and have further connections with him through our mutual, long-term involvement with a number of co-op organizations. Foremost among these is the Association of Cooperative Educators (ACE), an international organization dedicated to co-op education. Harold was a founding member of the association and its first vice-president, and ACE and the Centre are frequent participants, sponsors, and partners in each other’s events. Harold also has a longstanding commitment to the Canadian Association for Studies in Co-operation, whose administrative home is at the Centre, and the Saskatchewan Co-operative Association (SCA), whose board is regularly peopled by Centre personnel. And as with the Centre’s activities, Harold rarely misses an SCA event: he is always an enthusiastic participant, and was recently honoured with SCA’s Co-operative Contribution Award. Continue reading →

Top Co-op Issues: Action Items

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Nora Russell

As noted in the first post on this topic, Top Co-op Issues 2017 surveyed CEOs, board members, managers, and academics across Canada to obtain a snapshot of the most pressing concerns facing co-operative organizations today. This entry will discuss some of the many action items suggested by respondents. Although they provided clear advice on all twenty themes, the focus in this post is on the actions associated with the top six.

top-co-op-issues-2016-17

Click on chart for larger image.

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Top Co-op Issues 2017

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Nora Russell

In our second annual survey of Top Co-op Issues, we asked co-operative leaders across Canada to identify the most pressing concerns facing co-operative organizations today. According to CEOs, board members, managers, and academics in virtually every region and sector, the number one issue for co-op leaders is public awareness of the co-operative model — the lack of it, that is. As one person commented, “Raising the profile of co-ops in a noisy marketplace is difficult.”

Click on image for larger version

We conducted the survey as part of our mission to understand the world of co-ops and make that knowledge accessible. The results published here hold a mirror to the co-op sector, not only identifying important issues but also providing clear areas for collaboration for both advocacy and research. We selected our informants based on their specialized knowledge about co-ops. The 2017 survey included a sample similar to last year’s — CEOs, board members, managers, and academics balanced by region, sector, and role within the co-op. Their knowledge is invaluable because it is extensive, detailed, and privileged. Continue reading →

Member Representation

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Brett Fairbairn and Murray Fulton

Image credit below

In our Two-Hats post, we argue that directors of a second-tier co-operative must put the interests of that organization first when they are actively engaged with the board. This, in turn, means they cannot act as a “representative” of their first-tier organization while sitting on a second-tier board. But, if this is the case, where does representation occur?

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