Consumer Co-operative Movement Research Articles

The “awkwardnesses” of aid and exchange

Abstract Self-help and mutual aid have been at the heart of the consumer cooperative movement and its response to food insecurity since its inception. Yet how these terms are conceptualized and practiced in contemporary food co-ops often has more to do with their individual histories, ideologies, and the values of those involved than it does the history of the cooperative movement. Drawing on ethnographic examples from two London-based food co-ops with different backgrounds, this article explores how each enacts ideals of aid and exchange. It argues that the context of austerity creates “awkwardnesses” between and within personal values and organizational structures in the face of inequality, leading to blurred boundaries between different models of aid and exchange and the forms of moral accounting that these entail.

The Consumer Co-operative Movement in Finland and Lessons We Can Learn from It

Finland has a strong consumer co-operative movement with a market share of approximately 46 percent of daily goods. The co-operatives’ road to success in Finland has not been a straightforward process. In this article we describe the history of the Finnish SOK retail co-operative and pose the question of what we can learn from the retail co-operatives’ experiences. Historical research strives to demonstrate the way things used to be: What happened, why it happened, and what the consequences were. It searches for explanations using cause and effect. The economic research undertaken by business science aims to find ways for financial organisations and entrepreneurs to be successful. This article combines these perspectives. The source of this article is the research literature. The early 20th century in many ways proved to be a golden age for Finnish co-operatives. After the Second World War, in the 1950s and particularly in the 1960s, the general development of Finnish society clearly accelerated, and the consumer co-operative movement was unable to keep up with the pace of this development. After a severe crisis, a new rise began. What can we learn from this? In this article, we highlight several development trajectories and finally summarize them into ten main points. The list can be summarised as follows: internalize and stay true to the co-operative purpose and aims, manage the model accordingly, find a balance between the business and member community aspects of the model – the two different but complementary roles and remain current and future-oriented. Historically, poor success has been the result of doing the opposite: having too many side interests, forgetting or ignoring the co-operative identity, and romanticising the past.Received: 28 April 2023Accepted: 01 August 2023

Doing Business in the Schools of the Welfare State: Competing “Entrepreneurial Selves” and the Roots of Entrepreneurship Education in 1980s Sweden

This article concerns the rise of young entrepreneurship education programs in 1980s Sweden, which entered schools surprisingly early and quickly, backed by organized Swedish business. The increased popularity of entrepreneurship education toward the end of the twentieth century in many European welfare states is usually associated with a shift toward neoliberal, market-oriented, policies. It is argued here that an important reason for young entrepreneurship’s success was its ability to connect with the Swedish tradition of cooperation and democratic decision making, in combination with values such as individualism and competition. A case in point is the surprising compatibility between progressive pedagogical ideas and “neoliberal” entrepreneurialism. The article is based on a study of Ung Företagsamhet (Young Entrepreneurship, henceforth UF), the Swedish version of the American organization Junior Achievement, and the ambition of the consumer cooperative movement’s think tank, Koopi, to offer a different kind of entrepreneurship education. In the analysis, the concept of “the entrepreneurial self” is applied to these two different programs, and the results show how they clashed, but also overlapped, in ways that help explain the success of UF. The article is a contribution to our understanding of how entrepreneurship discourse emerged and manifested itself in everyday environments in the late twentieth century, and as such also contributes to the history of Nordic neoliberalism.

“Too many cooperatives and too few cooperativists”: the consumer cooperative movement in Catalonia 1898–1939

ABSTRACT This article charts the evolution of the Catalan Cooperative movement from the creation of the first regional organisation, the Chamber of Catalan and Balearic Cooperatives in 1898, to the end of the Civil War in 1939. It looks at the aims of the Chamber and its successor organisation the Federation of Catalan Cooperatives, as expressed at congresses and in the movement’s press and then analyses the tactics adopted to achieve these and why, in general, they did not enjoy the success that was hoped for. The founders of the Chamber were influenced by movements in other countries, specifically France, Belgium and the United Kingdom and was a member of the International Cooperative Alliance adopting the principles of these including political neutrality and the belief in acting independently of the State and political organisations. It was hoped that Catalan cooperatives would be able to catch up with and match the strength and influence of cooperatives in these countries. However, although the cooperative movement enjoyed spectacular growth during the Civil War, much of the progress that was made by cooperatives was due to circumstance and state intervention rather than due to the movement itself.

Left to die: the fate of the Catalan consumer cooperative movement during the primer franquismo (1939–59)

ABSTRACT During the 1930s, the Catalan cooperative movement finally became a movement of the masses, but Franco’s victory in the Civil War put an end to its expansion and to almost the whole movement. This article charts the consumer cooperatives’ fortunes in the Barcelona Province during the first 20 years of the new regime. It covers Francoist policies towards consumer cooperatives and the obstacles these and the bleak economic situation presented, focusing on the work of the organization created by the new National Syndicalist state apparatus: the Barcelona Territorial Union of Consumer Cooperatives (UTECO).

Commerce with a bit of ethics or ethics with a bit of commerce? The conundrum of British consumer co-operation 1863-1990

PurposeThis paper is concerned with the historical record of one business in the UK, which has long laid claim to the moral high ground in the conduct of its affairs – the amalgam of consumer co-operative business organisations, which eventually merged to become the Co-operative Group at the beginning of the 21st century. This paper aims to offer an assessment of the record of the British consumer co-operative movement’s efforts to abide by and promote its values and principles during the first 137 years of its existence (1863 to 1990).Design/methodology/approachThe paper is developed using largely qualitative research methods and a variety of sources. These include archival resources and business-historical materials such as committee minutes and correspondence. These materials have been complemented by several semi-structured recorded interviews with senior members of the Co-operative Group.FindingsThe authors develop several conclusions. First, where ethical choices were possible and no serious commercial interests were impaired, the co-operative movement could and usually did do its best to adhere to its principles. Second, in several instances, commercial interests did frequently trump ideals. Finally, the organisational structure of the movement made it very difficult to ensure that co-operative principles and values were adhered to.Originality/valueThis paper presents a unique case-study that examines the inherent tension between commerce and ethics in the co-operative movement.

Re-Evaluation of the Concept of “Co-Creation of Value” in the Producer–Consumer Cooperative Movement

Re-Evaluation of the Concept of “Co-Creation of Value” in the Producer–Consumer Cooperative Movement

When People Identify Themselves as “Consumers”: The Position of the Consumer Cooperative Movement in Modern Japan

When People Identify Themselves as “Consumers”: The Position of the Consumer Cooperative Movement in Modern Japan

A Path to a Countermovement? Forms of Integration in Polish Consumer Cooperatives

This paper discusses Polish consumer cooperatives in terms of the embedded economy as understood by Karl Polanyi. The author compares today‟s “new” cooperatives, or informal groups of consumers that have been emerging in Poland since 2010, with the “old” consumer cooperative movement that existed between 1906 and 1939, as represented mainly by the “Spolem” consumer cooperative union. Following Polanyi‟s understanding of the relationship between human economy and social institutions, I analyse reciprocity and redistribution as forms of economic integration in past and present cooperatives. Although the “new” cooperatives refer to the prewar cooperative traditions, their structure and economic operation differ vastly from the original model. I argue that the present structure of consumer cooperatives does not provide a base for symmetry and centricity – “supporting structures” for reciprocity and redistribution – although some of the new cooperatives do offer solutions for those deficits. This paper also discusses the nature of class barriers in the contemporary and historical consumer-cooperative movement, and relates this issue to Polanyian notions of countermovement and class interest.

Warriors for Lower Prices: The New Orleans Housewives' League and the Consumer Cooperative Movement, 1913–1921

During the 1914-1915 industrial depression, a harrowing food crisis gripped New Orleans and the nation. The Housewives' League, a local consumer advocacy group composed of white middle-and upper-class women, believed that President Woodrow Wilson's call for the south to feed itself could break the city's dependence on northern and western agriculture. However, the league decried retailers and wholesalers who monopolized regional produce distribution and artificially inflated food costs to the detriment of the family pocketbook. Avowing that an alliance between small farmers and women consumers would ameliorate the high cost of living, the Housewives' League, beginning December 1915, opened several cooperative curb markets across the affluent Uptown New Orleans neighborhood so that Louisiana truck farmers could sell directly to female customers. The Housewives' League thus joined a host of consumer activist groups around the nation operating cooperatives as emergency food distributors for economically precarious families. (1) Ultimately open four days a week, the New Orleans cooperative markets were sites of frenetic activity. Up to twenty-one produce carts jammed together 011 small plots of city land. Desperate for fresh and inexpensive produce, black, Chinese, and white customers arriving by car, by streetcar, and on foot rushed the laden wagons upstretched arms eager for their bargains. Patrons carted away their finds in wheelbarrows pushed by the small boys of the families, or baby perambulators, and gloated over [ljettuce as big and solid as cabbage, [excellent sweet potatoes, [t]he finest and tenderest spinach, and turnips and mustard greens, and endive and shallots. League members arose before daylight, rain or shine, cold or heat, and went to the various market places and sold ... fresh country eggs, homemade breads and jellies, and crafts. Farmers praised the arrangement, citing profits far exceeding those at public markets. (2) While the Housewives' League had yoked white women's cooperative enterprise to evolutionary socialism and social democratic thought since its founding 1913, league president Inez MacMartin Meyers hailed these cooperative curb markets as a revolution egalitarian food distribution. Reflecting the league's blend of socialist and reformist ideology, Meyers declared, think we are all socialistic, or will get there soon, the longer we find that we can't do the things we want to do. (3) To that end, the league's cooperatives provided white middle-class women with money-saving and laborsaving strategies so that they could devote themselves more fully to achieving broader Progressive reforms and women's enfranchisement. League women emulated national consumer cooperative organizations whose member-owners joined retail associations to contract directly with agricultural producers and distributors, circumventing the corrupt wholesalers and retailers whom the public blamed for perennial food supply crises. (4) Between 1913 and 1921, the Housewives' League rolled out several woman-run cooperatives--curbside produce stalls, World War I cooperative kitchens, and a grocery store--each of which connected rural producers to urban consumers. The history of the Housewives' League's cooperative projects deepens our understanding of how white southern progressive women's organizations operated the 1910s and 1920s. Viewing the Housewives' League through the lens of the national cooperative movement positions New Orleans as a cosmopolitan site of intellectual foment, a swiftly modernizing city emboldened by the circulation of international goods, bodies, and political thought. An outgrowth of the nascent women's club and consumer rights movements sweeping the industrializing South, the Housewives' League, whose inner circle consisted of Jews, northerners, and immigrants, believed that New Orleanians should emulate the socialists and Progressives who were erecting egalitarian global economic and political structures rather than kowtowing to the insular planter aristocrats who controlled the city's social life and politics. …

Retrieving the Co-operative Value-Based Leadership Model of Terry Thomas

The paper documents the post-war retrenchment and failure of the post-war British Consumer Co-operative Movement. In contrast to the general failure one CEO, Terry Thomas stands out both for his success in co-operative rebranding and returning to profitability the UK Co-operative Bank and because he alone amongst the top echelons of the Co-operative Groups Management based his strategies on a clearly articulated philosophy based on his understanding of the values and purpose of the co-operative movement rooted in its historical traditions grounded in the writings and achievements of Robert Owen, The paper goes on to provide a case study of the bank’s process of transformation from loss-making subsidiary to the first positive co-operative national brand in the post-war period of its history. The author argues that lack of appropriate vision based on the founding values and purposes of the Co-operative Movement is the principal reason for the management’s and governance failures that have beset the UK Co-operative Group. Instead of using the past to help in understanding the present and planning for the future, the UK Co-operative Group Leadership ignored it or worse used the past successes to congratulate itself and disguise its manifest failures. In this, they were supported by an uncritical Co-operative Union (later renamed Co-operatives UK). Davis argues large co-operatives cannot be managed by a civil service responsible to an elected board. Co-operatives need a servant-leadership model of professional management dedicated to the transformational goals set by the founders of the co-operative movement. This needs a radical rethink and promotion of co-operative management education and a dedicated executive recruitment that seeks out value-based professionals whose attitudes and values are compatible with Co-operative values, ownership and purpose.

Introduction

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes 1. For work on some of these failures, see Schewidy, ‘The Decline and Fall of Konsum Austria’; Brazda, ‘The Consumer Co-operatives in Germany’; and Muller, ‘Consumer Co-operatives in Great Britain’. 2. Fukuyama, The End of History. 3. A useful summary of the criticisms of co-operation offered during the 1980s and 1990s can be found in Furlough and Strikwerda, ‘Economics, Consumer Culture and Gender’. 4. Grott, ‘Why Co-ops Die’. 5. Cuevas and Fischer, Cooperative Financial Institutions. 6. Full text available at http://www.ilo.org/ilolex/cgi-lex/convde.pl?R193. 7. Birchall and Ketilson, The Resilience of the Co-operative Business Model. 8. See http://ec.europa.eu/europeaid/who/partners/civil-society/structured-dialogue_en.htm. 9. Furlough and Strikwerda, Consumers Against Capitalism?; Webster et al., The Hidden Alternative; Battilani and Schröter, A Special Kind of Business; Hilson, ‘The Nordic Consumer Co-operative Movement’; Friberg, The Workings of Co-operation; Ekberg, ‘Consumer Co-operation and the Transformation of Modern Food Retailing; Hilson, ‘The Consumer Co-operative Movement in Trans-national Perspective’. 10. See, for example, Purvis, ‘Stocking the Store’; Alexander, ‘Format Development and Retail Change’; Shaw and Alexander, ‘British Co-operative Societies as Retail Innovation’. 11. See Bonner, British Co-operation, 48–9. 12. Molina and Walton, ‘An Alternative Co-operative Tradition’. 13. Rodríguez Ranz et al., El Movimiento Cooperativo en Euskadi1884–1936. 14. Carbery, Consumers in Politics. 15. Molina and Walton, ‘An Alternative Co-operative Tradition’, 240–6. 16. Gide, Consumers’ Co-operatives Societies, 3. 17. Backstrom, Christian Socialism and Co-operation in Victorian England. 18. Gide, Consumers’ Co-operative Societies, 232–6. 19. On dairying co-operatives in Denmark in the late nineteenth century, see Henriksen and O’Rourke, ‘Incentives, Technology and the Shift to Year Long Dairying’. For a good example of a service co-operative was the urban planning CAIRE co-operative of post-war Italy (Reggio Emilia), see Maccaferri, ‘“A Co-operative of Intellectuals”’. For an example of a successful co-operative in the field of promoting working class home ownership see Samy, ‘Extending Home Ownership before the First World War’, 184–8. 20. Chaddad and Cook ‘Understanding New Cooperative Models’. 21. Kalmi, ‘The Disappearance of Co-operatives from Economics Textbooks’. 22. Chandler, Scale and Scope, 259–61. 23. Gurney, Co-operative Culture and the Politics of Consumption in England,1870–1930; Gurney, ‘The Battle of the Consumer in Postwar Britain’; and compare Johnson, Saving and Spending, ch. 5.

The Development of JCCU as National Center of Consumer Co-ops and Its Implications for Korean Consumer Co-operative Movement

The Development of JCCU as National Center of Consumer Co-ops and Its Implications for Korean Consumer Co-operative Movement

The Co-operative Movement and Communities in Britain, 1914-1960: Minding Their Own Business. By Nicole Robertson.

This thematically structured book about the British co-operative movement is a welcome addition to the field of co-operative studies and historical studies in general. The themes covered in the book are: ‘the impact of the movement on the economic and recreational lives of its members; consumption and consumer issues; and the role of the co-operative movement played within the labour movement’ (p. 11). Geographically we travel from the capital to mining communities in Wales into the Midlands and up to Scotland. The eight retail societies studied reflects, according to the author, both the general development of a consumer co-operative movement in Britain and the variations in character that was the outcome of interaction between central and local levels within the movement. Besides writing a history about co-operative developments, Robertson also wishes to use the co-operative material to tell us something about community life in a number of villages, towns, and cities in times of war, boom, depression, and prosperity in Britain.

The Consumer's Co-operative Movement in Germany 1919-1933

The Consumer's Co-operative Movement in Germany 1919-1933

Alan G. Burton, The British Consumer Co-operative Movement and Film 1890s–1960s. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2005. 260pp. Bibliography. £55.00

<b>Alan G. Burton</b>, <i>The British Consumer Co-operative Movement and Film 1890s–1960s</i>. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2005. 260pp. Bibliography. £55.00

Retail change and the United Kingdom Co-operative Movement - new opportunity beckoning?

This paper considers the performance of an important player in the UK retail market - the Co-operative societies. We argue that the fragmented nature of the UK Consumer Co-operative Movement - which had at one time over 1000 separate associations - has historically been an impediment to its market competitiveness. The paper also demonstrates how wider trends in UK retailing favour nationally-organized chains such as the current market leader - Tesco. This inherent inability of the Co-op to compete nationally eventually led to it having to retreat from the successful superstore format so favoured by its rivals. However, we argue that current policy agendas offer a new opportunity for the Co-op.

Food Safety in Modern Japan

This paper will investigate the latter issue through an analysis of food safety in modern Japan. The importance of food safety to many Japanese consumers is reflected in the growth of organic food production, the success of the Japanese consumer cooperative movement over the past 20 years, and the “greening” of the marketing strategies of many food firms. We will begin with a review of historical concerns about food supply and the relationship between diet and health. We then demonstrate the extent to which food safety concerns have become widespread amongst Japanese consumers and how food safety concerns are a logical outgrowth of historical concerns about food security and health. These findings are then reviewed within the context of theories of contemporary Japanese social change. Our argument is that consumer concern over food safety reflects the cultural value placed on eating and health, is unlikely to dissipate in the foreseeable future, and that the emergence into the mainstream of food safety concerns presents challenges to Japanese social movements promoting alternative food systems.

Funeral Co-Op Members' Characteristics and Motives

Memorial societies are movement organizations of the consumer cooperative movement concerned with funeral and death issues. A member survey in four California memorial societies disclosed that the typical member was a retired individual in his or her sixties, with a spouse in the same age range, Anglo, and college educated. The main reasons for joining the society were a desire to obtain a simple inexpensive funeral and reduce responsibilities for survivors. The contributions of memorial societies in consumer education, protection, and reform of the funeral industry are discussed.

The mothers' international: The Women's Co-operative Guild and feminist pacifism

The Women's Co-operative Guild (now the Co-operative Women's Guild), founded in 1983 as an auxilliary of the English Consumer Co-operative Movement, became a strong feminist representative of married working-class women. Its ‘social’ feminism stressed women's maternal, domestic role, deriving from it a series of values seen as lacking in male-dominated public life. Politics was to be transformed by means of women's active involvement, including but extending past their acquisition and use of the vote. The ‘female’ values were nurturant and cooperative; internationally, they focussed on international organization and peace. The Consumer Co-operative Movement provided a reformist ideology supportive of women's activism and pacifism, but the Movement itself as an organization was increasingly hostile to the Guild's feminism both within and outside the Movement. Although relatively uninfluential, the Guild thus embodies a tradition of feminist pacifism that is active and increasingly influential today.