Managing The Cooperative Difference

COOPNET: Human Resources Development for Cooperative Management and Networking.

This book is the fruit of our work on and with cooperatives of the last 20 years. Throughout this period, we have conducted extensive research on the management of cooperatives, many using the research-action methodology, i.e., directly involving teams of managers, employees and administrators. We also wrote many cooperative management cases while sitting on different (cooperative) boards. On the theoretical level, our work has allowed us to develop three key ideas on which is based our conception of the management of cooperatives. First, a cooperative equilibrium model that aligns values and cooperative principles leading to a proper management framework better adapted for cooperatives. A second key model, developed in the late 1990s, introduces what we have called the identity malaise observed in many cooperatives. This identity malaise needs to be understood for a solution to be found. The third key model in our management approach to cooperative identifies the strategic levers leading to what we have named a new cooperative paradigm (NPC). Started more than 20 years ago, this reflection leads us today to recognize a significant competitive advantage inherent in cooperative organizations. The basic idea of this NPC is focused on finding inherent benefits embedded in the cooperative values and principles when confronted with current and future market challenges, compared to other modes of organization. Today, our vision of these challenges is fuelled by the recognition of emerging strategies namely the congruence of organization-employee values, the shift from customer orientation to engagement orientation to enhance customer loyalty, the feeling of psychological ownership as a differentiator and the democratization and value cocreation process. This book also presents several cases studies of cooperatives in different sectors (agricultural, credit union, insurance, food retail). These cases were written over the last 20 years. They illustrate the different facets and components of the three ideas (models) at the heart of this book.

During the last two decades, companies were (and still are) looking for new sources of efficiency, while most industries have reached stages of maturity and saturation. Moreover, internationally available information and communication systems, at near-zero transaction costs, are leading to intensified interactions between customers, and between customers and firms. As for cooperatives, they are experiencing not only the impacts of market transformation, but also pressure on the relevance of their own identity. In this book, two theoretical models are developed: a new cooperative paradigm (NPC), and a cooperative equilibrium model. The combination of these two models highlights the potential competitive advantages of the cooperative organization in response to the transformations mentioned. In relation to the NPC, the strategies selected are: (1) value congruence, (2) psychological ownership, (3) loyalty and customer engagement, and (4) value co-creation. For each of these strategies, three key questions are addressed. First, what are the competitive advantages associated with them, regardless of the organizational form? Second, how do the foundations of the cooperative distinction converge with the essential parameters to be mastered to design, implement and operationalize these strategies? Finally, what are the unique sustainable competitive advantages of a cooperative organization relative to these same strategies? Furthermore, for the logic of action specific to the cooperative management method to be expressed, the cooperative values, principles and rules must be articulated in an appropriate management framework. This is what the cooperative balance model proposes. The last key idea introduced in this book concerns the denaturalizing tendency observed among many cooperatives, which leads to an identity crisis. The two theoretical models cited are highly relevant to the challenges resulting from this denaturalizing tendency. The three models introduced constitute the first part of this book. The second part offers a practical perspective while several cases of cooperatives are included.

Covering analysis, field studies, micro-world studies, training and the creation of computer artefacts under the Co-operative Process Management umbrella. This book should be of interest to those engaged in research or building applications in a

The degree of development reached by cooperatives of different sectors throughout the world, which among others led to the UN declaring 2012 as the International Year of Cooperatives, needs to be accompanied by a similar development of corresponding legislation. To this end, a better knowledge of cooperative law from the comparative point of view, as has already been established for other types of enterprises, becomes of great importance. This book strives to fill this gap, and is divided into four parts. The first part offers an analytic and conceptual framework with which to understand, study and assess cooperative law from a transnational and comparative perspective. The second part includes several chapters dealing with attempts to harmonize cooperative laws. The third part contains an overview of more than 30 national cooperative laws, while the last part summarizes and compares these national cooperative laws, thus laying the foundation for a comparative cooperative law doctrine.

Transaction Management Support for Cooperative Application is a comprehensive report on a successful international project, called TRANSCOOP, carried out from 1994 to 1997 by a group of European scientists. But the book is also much more than that, namely, an ambitious attempt to integrate Computer-Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW), Workflow Management Systems (WFMS), and Transaction Processing (TP) technologies. The very term {\em cooperative transactions} is in itself contradictory. Cooperation technologies, such as CSCW, aim at providing a framework for information exchange between cooperating (human) participants. In contrast, traditional transaction technologies allow concurrent users to operate on shared data, while providing them with the illusion of complete isolation from each other. To overcome this contradiction, the TRANSCOOP researchers had to come up with a new and original notion of correctness of concurrent executions, based on controlled exchange of information between concurrent users. Merging histories in accordance with prespecified commutativity rules among concurrent operations provides transactional guarantees to activities such as cooperative designing, which until now had to be carried out sequentially. As an interesting consequence, it also provides a basis for management of consistency between disconnected or mobile users who operate independently and yet, must occasionally reconcile their work with each other.