Co-ops and Social Enterprise - discuss

CAN rejects the notion that co-operatives are a type of social enterprise on two grounds:
1. The word “social” in social enterprise refers to a society outside of the organisation but in a co-operative the society is internal to the co-operative. Social enterprise is more akin to the charity sector than it is to the co-operative movement because its beneficiaries are non-members.
2. Any organisation can call itself a social enterprise but if it wants to substantiate that claim it must do some reporting on its social impact or, at least, its social output. If a co-op does not do social accounting and reporting it is no more a social enterprise than any other enterprise that doesn’t.

Therefore our Mission Statement refers to “assisting co-operatives and social enterprises” and not “assisting co-operatives and other social enterprises”.

We think that co-operatives and social enterprises are different types of social business.

Of course, a co-operative can be a social enterprise and that is what CAN is trying to be.

We want to develop social impact measurement from a co-operative perspective. Conventionally, the unit of measurement of social impact often relates to the individual. So, for example, a programme that delivers health benefits will measure the number of people whose health is improved by the social output of that programme and a training programme will measure the number of people successfully trained. But is “social” an appropriate word in this context? Societies may or may not be created or improved by these impacts, and even if they are, that is not what is measured. A count of the number of beneficiaries of a programme is not a measure of increased social cohesion or the resilience of communities. Thus, what is usually referred to as “social impact” is not really social impact, it is an aggregation of individual impacts.

The forces that bind people together and create societies are not so easily measured. The most important of these is the holistic principle that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. This is the fundamental principle behind co-operatives. People do not form co-operatives just to get economies of scale. They do so because they know that by working together and pooling their resources they can achieve much more than they can by working alone. This is the basis not only of co-operatives but of all civilisation.

By focusing on individual (more easily measured) impacts, co-operatives (and social enterprises) risk becoming wedded to an understanding more akin to the charity sector than it is to the co-operative sector. Like a charity, a social enterprise sets out to improve the lives of individuals external to that organisation. Despite its name, the social enterprise movement does not explicitly seek to create or improve social cohesion. That is not to say that it does not have that effect, just that when it does, that is not what is measured.

Sometimes, what is recorded as positive social impact by charities and social enterprises actually reduces social cohesion and resilience when, for example, communities or individuals become dependent upon the continued provision of free or subsidised food or money.

Happy co-operative new year everyone.

Austen,

CAN is certainly entitled to define for its own purposes its position on social enterprise. The issue - for this thread - is that CAN (according to my research with Mike Bull - published in 'Understanding Social Enterprise: Theory and Practice') is that CAN only formed in 1998. That is 18 years after Beechwood College in Leeds started teaching social enterprise courses, and 17 years after 'social enterprise' was first defined by cooperative movement members in the UK through the first edition of the Social Audit Toolkit.

Furthermore, the author of the toolkit (Freer Spreckley) went on to form a partnership with Cliff Southcombe (Social Enterprise Partnership). They ran a conference in 1994 to develop an operational definition of social enterprise for international work (still 4 years before the formation of CAN, and before the US discourse hit the UK).

So, while CAN can contribute to an expansion of the use of the social enterprise, it does not, and cannot, claim credibility as the body that defines the term for everyone involved the field. It is counter-productive form them to do so.

The FairShares Association works from the original definition operationalised in the Social Audit Toolkit, developed by the Social Enterprise Partnership, then Social Enterprise Europe and now Social Enterprise International. The FairShares Association (through the FairShares Model) has helped to maintain a fully cooperative and mutual (not charitable) definition of social enterprise alive.

CAN can reject (or limit) cooperatives within its own sphere of influence using its definition, but the FairShares Association values the enrichment of both members and beneficiaries through a single enterprise system comprising cooperatives and mutual societies.

Lastly, on your point 2), social impact reporting (however good it is) is not sufficient to claim credibility as a contributor to the social enterprise movement because social impact occurs whether it is reported or not. There are a sufficient number of studies of cooperative/mutual networks (particularly in Italy and Spain, but also by researchers in the ICA and UN) that provide evidence of the social impact of cooperative networks as an ecosystem.

The one I always use to rebutt your argument is David Erdal's PhD. He successfully argued (and was later supported Ash Amin's studies) that cooperative networks deliver consistent economic, health and welfare improvements across entire communities without the need for the formation of charities (or philanthropic organisations). On that basis, there is no credible rationale for excluding cooperative from the field of social enterprise because their joint action through the cooperative ecosystem creates the better quality of life that is the goal of the movement as a whole.

In summary, and I reiterate for those who did not read my earlier post, the most credible way to approach the study/definition of social enterprise (and to understand the cooperative contribution to it) is to accept that actors from the private, charitable and cooperative/mutual sectors have each (at different time and in different places) set out their views on what social enterprise is (in an attempt to capture the space).
The academic community - particularly the 450 members of the EMES International Research Research - accept all three of the above as legitimate parts of the field.

I urge other, including those in this thread, to roundly and robustly reject attempts by one 'wing' of the social enterprise movement to attempt hegemonic control over the definition that might usurp and undermine the work of others in the movement.

Rory - here. I've written to Mark Simmonds to explain why the comment came across as anonymous - the account being used in this group is [email protected] (the admin account of the association) and not my own account. I was originally invited as [email protected] but on changing the account email to [email protected] it is less clear who is posting.

Sion - thanks for that response. The double-edge of the initiative of co-operators from the late 1970s to late 1990s was to reopen the space for a wider discussion of cooperative action (through the medium of social enterprise), and on that level the space has opened up beautifully. At the same time, the ambiguities in the language opened that space up to many non-cooperative actors too, and after the Community Interest Consultation (under the New Labour banner) they became ascendant in the UK. Nevertheless (as I hope you will read shortly in the Social Enterprise Journal) the challenge to the neoliberal wing of the social enterprise world has carried on as an underground movement, and is now gathering momentum again gloablly.

I'll respond to the CAN post separately as that needs a separate response. If someone can invite [email protected] to this group, the posts will be personally attributable again.

Thanks for clarifying that was you Rory - I think only Admin's can invite your other email address.. and I'm not an Admin here.

I'm certainly learning more co-op history here though ;)

Similarly, I've seen co-ops rely on secondary rules and ignore the governing document. The Secondary Rules are amended to reflect changing member needs/desires. In more than once case, on inspection, some secondary rules contradicted the governing document.

Well, I had the pleasure of free funding from a multi-national bank to get a degree in "social enterprise" and it soon became clear to me that the term was basically ideological, tied to the neo-liberal project of remodelling charities and the community sector along the lines of existing business practice and encouraging a revival of the notion of the middle-class entrepreneur as hero, as put forward by Joseph Schumpeter. I do not believe that"fairshares" constitute a "Silent Revolution" any more than the concept of "A fair day's wage for a fair day's work" threatened the continued development of capitalism. But that's not to say that I reject multi-stakeholder co-operatives, indeed I am a member of one I set helped set up. But this is basically an accommodating survival strategy –as Sîon says – from a position of weakness in a world dominated by capital.
(P.S. I did actually write this before reading Rory's post above!)

Austen,

CAN is certainly entitled to define for its own purposes its position on social enterprise. The issue - for this thread - is that CAN (according to my research with Mike Bull - published in 'Understanding Social Enterprise: Theory and Practice') is that CAN only formed in 1998. That is 18 years after Beechwood College in Leeds started teaching social enterprise courses, and 17 years after 'social enterprise' was first defined by cooperative movement members in the UK through the first edition of the Social Audit Toolkit.

Furthermore, the author of the toolkit (Freer Spreckley) went on to form a partnership with Cliff Southcombe (Social Enterprise Partnership). They ran a conference in 1994 to develop an operational definition of social enterprise for international work (still 4 years before the formation of CAN, and before the US discourse hit the UK).

So, while CAN can contribute to an expansion of the use of the social enterprise, it does not, and cannot, claim credibility as the body that defines the term for everyone involved the field. It is counter-productive form them to do so.

The FairShares Association works from the original definition operationalised in the Social Audit Toolkit, developed by the Social Enterprise Partnership, then Social Enterprise Europe and now Social Enterprise International. The FairShares Association (through the FairShares Model) has helped to maintain a fully cooperative and mutual (not charitable) definition of social enterprise alive.

CAN can reject (or limit) cooperatives within its own sphere of influence using its definition, but the FairShares Association values the enrichment of both members and beneficiaries through a single enterprise system comprising cooperatives and mutual societies.

Lastly, on your point 2), social impact reporting (however good it is) is not sufficient to claim credibility as a contributor to the social enterprise movement because social impact occurs whether it is reported or not. There are a sufficient number of studies of cooperative/mutual networks (particularly in Italy and Spain, but also by researchers in the ICA and UN) that provide evidence of the social impact of cooperative networks as an ecosystem.

The one I always use to rebutt your argument is David Erdal's PhD. He successfully argued (and was later supported Ash Amin's studies) that cooperative networks deliver consistent economic, health and welfare improvements across entire communities without the need for the formation of charities (or philanthropic organisations). On that basis, there is no credible rationale for excluding cooperative from the field of social enterprise because their joint action through the cooperagive ecosystem creates the better quality of life that is the goal of the movement as a whole.

In summary, and I reiterate for those who did not read my earlier post, the most credible way to approach the study/definition of social enterprise (and to understand the cooperative contribution to it) is to accept that actors from the private, charitable and cooperative/mutual sectors have each (at different time and in different places) set out their views on what social enterprise is (in an attempt to capture the space).
The academic community - particularly the 450 members of the EMES International Research Research - accept all three of the above as legitimate parts of the field.

I urge others, including those in this thread, to roundly and robustly reject attempts by one 'wing' of the social enterprise movement to attempt hegemonic control of its definition and usurp and undermine the work of others in the movement.

How true!

Fabian,

Not sure who supervised your degree but they have clearly steered you away from a large body of literature on social enterprise that explores its cooperative heritage and mutual roots. On FairShares, there are a large number of much more recent (and much stronger) publications than ‘Silent Revolution’ (which was written pre-PhD, 16 years ago). See the following pages:

https://www.fairshares.coop/publications

and

https://www.fairshares.coop/videos

Best
Rory

'All society rules assume an authority hierarchy'. Really Bob?
. If final decisions are one member one vote, where does the authority rest, how does it manifest?. What can be done at the outset of a new coop to guard against hierarchy?. Is it a constant battle?. Maybe it''s the main battle that defines society.