Cooperatives are business enterprises that are owned and run by a group of people who work for mutual benefit. The International Cooperative Alliance defines them as an independent group of people who collectively own and democratically control an organization that will meet the shared social, cultural, and economic needs of all members. Cooperatives are owned and operated by the people who work there or by those who make use of the company’s services. These organizations are what the academic study of cooperative economics is all about.
Cooperation, the sharing of resources and the organization of work for mutual return is nothing new for human beings, however, cooperatives (also known as co-ops or cooperatives) go a step further by organizing all the objectives and shared efforts of its members and defining the company itself. For example, when looking at the history of cooperatives, Europe appears to be the site of the first cooperatives that existed in the context of industry.
Cooperative Development
Robert Owen (1771-1858) lived as a social activist and leader of the cooperative movement.
The Fenwick Weavers’ Society was established to provide local workers with reduced-price oats in 1761. The group, formed in Fenwick, East Ayrshire, Scotland, eventually began offering savings and loans, education and emigration services.
In 1810 Robert Own and his partners bought the New Lanark factory and instituted better labor standards and quality of life, including passing profits on to employees through a discount store. After his success in New Lanark, Owen proceeded to share his concepts and experience by writing, lecturing, and creating cooperative communities in Hampshire, Indiana, and Glasgow. Although these attempts were not all successful, his ideas were passed on, thanks in part to The Cooperator, a newspaper formed by William King in 1828 to promulgate the cooperative concept.
The Rochdale Equitable Pioneers Society, a group of weavers and craftsmen from Rochdale, England, founded a cooperative that is widely regarded as the first successful business of its kind. It was from this success that the “Rochdale Principles” were created and used to guide the creation of more cooperatives, including many modern cooperatives. After the success of Rochdale, over 1,000 cooperatives were formed across the UK.
The Tolpuddle Martyrs (created in 1832) and other solidarity societies also helped advance labor and consumer groups.
Cooperatives at the end of the 20th century began to use the multi-stakeholder paradigm, and from 1994 to 2009, the EU revised its accounting systems in order to recognize the growing economic importance of cooperatives. The co-op history has shown a tremendous amount of changes to co-op, while leaving the core themes intact.
The cooperative cause finds its roots in multiple influences and locations around the world. The Western world has seen profit-sharing systems in use since 1795. One of the key ideas behind Friendly Societies based on reciprocity and self-help has been the rejection of distinctions between the ‘deserving’ and ‘undeserving’ poor that They were defined both in and religious welfare institutions after radical revisions of the British Poor Laws in 1834.
Instead of adhering to the belief that an individual had to own property to have a say in decision making, Friendly Societies adhered to the principle of one member, one vote. In fact, since the mid-19th century, universal suffrage and the advancement of democracy have been a central focus of many cooperative organizations. Before the rise of industrial factories and unions, consumer cooperatives and Friends’ Societies were the most common organizational institutions, with over 80% of British workers and 90% of Australian workers being members of at least one Society of Friends.
The concept of mutual ownership and operation of a company or partnership has been adopted in various economic enterprises since the mid-19th century. From merchants to cooperative stores and financial and educational institutions, common property has been the mutual property of those served by the association or company, with surpluses shared based on members’ cooperative cooperation rather than their capital investment. This is an important distinction, because in many other organizations, investment equals power and control. When asked what is a cooperative?, there is a decided preference for rewarding effort over investment.
Globally, economic democracy has been the driving force behind the cooperative movement. A socioeconomic philosophy that has drawn on and influenced many different approaches to promoting democratic principles, economic democracy proposes shifting decision-making power from the few to the many, from corporate shareholders to public stakeholders. Marxism, Leninism, anarchism, and socialism are tied to the basic principle of economic democracy, namely, the expansion of responsibility and decision-making power of all those who contribute to an economic organization. Although the decline of the USSR helped promulgate socialist strategies, advocates of economic democracy have yet to establish a basic challenge to the hegemony of global neoliberal capitalism.