A cooperative is a concept of association of persons united voluntarily to reach their common social, economic, and cultural needs and aspirations through a jointly-owned enterprise.” Cooperatives are owned by their members, with each member having one vote in electing the board of directors.
Second- and third-tier cooperatives whose members are from other cooperatives platforms use a cooperatively owned and governed website, mobile app, or a protocol to facilitate the sale of goods and services.
Cooperative businesses are more economically resilient than other forms of enterprise, with twice the number of cooperatives (80%) surviving their first five years and other business ownership models (41%). Cooperatives frequently have social goals to accomplish by investing a proportion of trading profits back into their communities. For example, in 2013, retail cooperatives in the UK invested 6.9% of their pre-tax profits in the communities they trade compared with 2.4% for other rival supermarkets.
From 2002 cooperatives have been distinguishable on the Internet through the use of a .coop domain.
- Origin and History of Cooperatives:
Cooperation dates back as far as human civilization has been organizing for mutual benefits. Tribes were organized as cooperative structures, distributing jobs, and resources among each other, trading with the external communities. In the English-speaking world, most forms of cooperation between workers and owners expressed today as “profit-sharing” and “surplus sharing” arrangements existed as far back as 1795.
- HISTORY of the Cooperatives :
Welsh social reformer Robert Owen in 1810 from Newtown in mid-Wales and his partners purchased New Lanark mill from Owen’s father-in-law David Dale. They introduced better labor standards, including discounted retail shops where profits were passed on to his employees.
The Rochdale Society of Equitable Pioneers (RCEP) of 1984 is considered the first successful cooperative enterprise, used as a model for modern coops, following the ‘Rochdale Principles.’
Organizations embraced these ideas firstly amongst tradespeople, in educational institutes, cooperative stores, financial institutions, and industrial enterprises.
They were dedicated to ensuring that cooperative businesses have equal opportunities as other businesses and the cooperatives are as accessible in the market.
In 1945 Artturi Ilmari Virtanen had been awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his invention of the AIV silage, which improved milk production and created a method of preserving butter, the AIV salt led to an increase in finished butter exports.
Cooperative banks were the first to adopt online banking. Stanford Federal Credit Union was the first institution to offer online internet banking services to all its members in October 1994. OP Financial Group, a cooperative, became the second online bank globally and the first in Europe.
With the USSR’s declining power and influence after the 1960s, socialist strategies were pluralized, though economic democratizes have not yet established a fundamental challenge to the hegemony of global neoliberal capitalism.
In a research study by the World Council of Credit Unions, the 5-year survival rate of cooperatives in the United States was 90% compared to 3-5% for traditional businesses. As of 2012, the number of cooperatives number reached one billion, so the organizational structure and movement have seeped into popular culture.
The local grocery was a cooperative store, sharing profits among its customers. Such shops were popular in South Wales.
