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I've realised that people might not really have any clue about how #coops are different from regular businesses. So I'm going to write something.
Questions?
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There are no stupid answers. You might want to ask about things related to everything from politics to money to the history of the co-operative movement. It could be that you just want to know how co-ops make decisions when everyone owns the business? Up to you.
@spaceraser@fosstodon.org@dajb I work at a very large co-op right now that has, effectively, insulated the governance from direct action by co-op members by having elections and electing officers, but only from a pre-selected group of candidates. The group that pre-selects the candidates are the current board of directors. I know this is how *my* co-op works, but what I don't know is if this arrangement is common, the larger the co-op gets, and whether the author thinks this is desirable in some cases.
@spaceraser Oh interesting, thank you
@spaceraser @dajb I'm slowly coming to the notion that coops don't scale well without creating these types of problems. They DO federate well, so the answer might be to create lots of smaller cooperatives and federate them for buying power.
@steveediger @dajb yeah I think that natural response to the other, the desire to protect the co-op/“our thing” from people that “don’t share our values”, can cause incremental change that leads to somewhere you don’t necessarily want to be. I don’t know if you can *guarantee* the culture and mission of a co-op won’t change *and* preserve democratic, “flat” heirarchy.
@steveediger @dajb the way our co-op managed growth was drawing the board from the business/retail professional executive people that happened to be co-op members and making retail executive experience a de-facto requirement for board membership. I don’t know if thats great, but I also don’t know if you don’t need experience leading groups of people at scale to effectively lead a “co-op” that is itself the largest retailer in its sector. Maybe the solution is to never get that big, like you said
@spaceraser @steveediger Yeah, Principle 5 is explicitly about upskilling people
@dajb @steveediger been digging in to the WAO site and I’m currently in the weeds on badges. Is there a co-op principles course on Participate I could dig in to?
@spaceraser @steveediger there's not, but that's what we're talking to the new https://workers.coop about (which is being formed out of CoopsUK)
This work is six years old at this point and we're planning to revisit it soon, especially as it uses our old logo! https://goo.gl/XzLWso
(image by @bryanmmathers)
@dajb @spaceraser @bryanmmathers so you're involved with the new venture. We, the USFWC Peer Tech Co-op Network, were just informed about it by John Atherton. I hope your venture is successful!
@steveediger @spaceraser Thanks! Trying to do what we can