Cooperative identity as a yardstick for transformative change

Abstract

Cooperatives serve a competitive yardstick role in markets dominated by market power such as monopsony or monopoly. This paper argues they can also serve a normative yardstick role in efforts to provide contextual social indicators for sustainability reporting that aims to instigate transformative change. The Statement on the Cooperative Identity, which includes cooperative values, principles, and purpose of associative economic organizing (ica.coop), can serve as a blueprint for the construction of social sustainability indicators. The paper then addresses two issues: one, it answers the question what should cooperatives measure and why; and two, it suggests the framework for transformative indicators informed by the purpose of cooperative organizing. In particular, cooperative enterprise model contributes to fair income distribution, promotes economic democracy, de-commodifies necessities and fictitious commodities, and contributes to community development by investing in the real economy. These impact areas ought to be measured and disclosed.