Paul Thompson
All firms are co-operatives? That can’t be right…
When I first started studying co-operatives as a graduate student, the first article I read was a piece provocatively titled “All firms are cooperatives – and so are governments.” Its author, Yale law professor Henry Hansmann, claimed exactly what you would expect from the title: that investor-owned businesses were no different in their structure than co-operatives. Continue reading
Paul Thompson
“Chemistry is the study of matter. But I prefer to think of it as the study of change. Now just think about this: electrons, they change their energy levels; molecules change their bonds; elements, they combine and change into compounds. Well that… that’s all of life, right?”
-Walter White, Season 1 Episode 1 of Breaking Bad
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-d23GS56HjQ
Paul Thompson
In November, the Centre hosted its annual MacPherson Talk. The 2018 lecture featured Nathan Schneider from the University of Colorado, Boulder. Professor Schneider’s work as a journalist, academic, and author has focused on platform co-operatives and their role in ownership and governance in the digital economy. This series of blog posts is inspired by his talk, entitled “An Internet of Ownership: Democratic Design for the Online Economy.”
The Amalgamation Question
Darcy Overland
From the time the first credit union was formed in Saskatchewan in 1910, 380 individual credit unions were incorporated. Today, there are 44 (SaskCentral). Co-opertives and credit unions usually start out small, serving the needs of geographically defined members. The power and appeal of the credit union is in locally-based decision making and connection to the local community. When credit unions have been in existence for multiple generations, the communities change, economies change, and environments change. The board is tasked with ensuring the credit union is sustainable both today and in the future. Can credit unions that were formed under different circumstances continue to provide quality services to their members in their new realities? When does the amalgamation question arise? Continue reading
Nora Russell
As noted in the first post on this topic, Top Co-op Issues 2018 surveyed CEOs, board members, managers, and academics across Canada to obtain a snapshot of the most pressing concerns facing co-operative organizations today. This post will discuss some of the many action items suggested by respondents. Although they provided clear advice on all twenty themes, we will focus here on the top six. Continue reading
Nora Russell
We’ve just completed our third annual survey of Top Co-op Issues, asking 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 remains, as it was last year, public awareness of the co-operative model. As one respondent put it succinctly: “I believe the lack of understanding of the co-operative model among the general public is still the sector’s biggest challenge.” Continue reading
Dionne Pohler, with Nora Russell
Introduction
The Filene Research Institute and the Canadian Credit Union Association recently commissioned me to write a report examining the characteristics of the well-governed credit union and exploring the values and risks associated with co-operative governance models. Below, I summarize some of the key insights. You can download the full report on which this summary is based here.
Recent mergers and consolidations in the credit union system have led to a decrease in the number of credit unions and an increase in the size of the largest ones, which collectively manage tens of billions of dollars in assets and serve millions of members across the country. As credit unions diversify and grow, they face more risk and greater competition, as well as challenges to the effectiveness of their board governance. Continue reading
Part Two: Indigenizing the Co-operative Counter Narrative
Isobel Findlay
Throughout their diverse histories around the world, co-operatives have found common cause with other social movements (in Italy, Spain, and Latin America, for example), deriving new energies, enterprise, and understandings in the process. While they have much in common with Indigenous communities, co-operatives have missed opportunities to act in solidarity with them, to decolonize public discourses, challenge market logic’s Eurocentric thinking, and capitalize on their shared investments in and capacities for sharing, innovation, and resilience in the most hostile of environments (Findlay and Findlay 2013). Continue reading
Part 1: Remembering the Co-operative Counter Narrative
Isobel M. Findlay
In the context of the economic, financial, and environmental crises that continue to shake belief in mainstream institutions (trust is at record lows, even in Canada), many look to the sharing economy as a real game changer. They promote it as a revolutionary disrupter, empowering people to leverage underused assets and reduce environmental impacts, liberating them from the excesses of ownership and regulation behind the crises, and even helping to renew community bonds. According to enthusiasts and opportunists alike, sharing is now all about accessing underused and unused capacity in the interests of efficiency, convenience, and choice. However, as an allegedly new market signifier in a hyperconnected communicative economy, the sharing economy forgets or ignores the history of sharing, especially in co-operative and Indigenous settings, so as to better hype cybermutualism as accelerated convenience and enhanced consumer choice. Continue reading
Murray Fulton, Brett Fairbairn, Dionne Pohler
Canadian credit unions are facing significant challenges as they attempt to reorganize to meet a rapidly changing economic, technological, demographic, and organizational environment. These problems have been well documented and can be found in reports by credit union organizations such as Central 1’s If now now, when? and in academic commentaries such as our recent blog post, “Credit Unions in Canada: Design Principles for Greater Co-operation.” Continue reading
