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
Murray Fulton, Brett Fairbairn, and Dionne Pohler
Co-operatives have an important role to play in the economy. Understanding this role is particularly important when markets are undergoing major changes — as in the case of privatization.
The privatization of liquor retailing stores in Saskatchewan provides an excellent example of the need to understand the role co-operatives play in creating well-functioning markets. In this post, we revisit the argument we made in a recent StarPhoenix/Leader-Post op-ed piece and suggest that, according to its privatization announcement, the Saskatchewan government fails to understand this role. Continue reading
Murray Fulton and Dionne Pohler
Dionne Pohler
Murray Fulton
The question posed above is the entirely appropriate title of an October 2016 report by Central 1 on possible futures for the centrals in the Canadian credit union system (read the report here). As the report indicates, low margins, increasing competition, rapid technological change, increasingly diverse expectations for member services, and new and often unfavourable regulatory environments make it clear that the status quo is unsustainable and change is required at the second-tier level. Continue reading
Markus Hanisch
The Centre’s second annual MacPherson Talk featured Dr. Markus Hanisch, managing director of the Institute for Research on Co-operatives at Humboldt University in Berlin.
Hanisch’s presentation — “Changing Governance in European Co-operatives: Simply Shifting or Losing Control?” — outlined a series of innovations occurring in European co-operative governance and the impact of these changes on co-operative performance. Based on data from 571 farmer co-operatives in the European Union, Hanisch concluded that co-operatives that have implemented certain governance innovations — professionalising and allowing outsiders to join their boards of directors, recruiting larger boards, and creating a governance model in which the co-op acts as a holding structure — have improved their performance. The research also notes, however, that these shifts towards corporate governance structures may affect member control. Continue reading