Co-op Governance - Rules & Culture

Hi Emma, I am working with a pre-startup group in Ealing, W London, towards a mukti stakeholder care coop. I think they will have much to learn from you, being probably 18 months behind your stage, and would like to share some of your governance stuff? Further down the line, a mentoring relationship might be appropriate, but I am very conscious that you will have a lot of such requests just when you have loads on your plate, so it would need to be carefully managed - and compensated! Can you and I have a line of communication in the meantime?

I think its normal for coops to ignore their primary rules until there's a dispute. I know of lots Ive had dealings with.
To me this reflects the living relationships between the members and so long as those are cioperatively healthy thats better than relying on a dry as dust alienating set of legalspeak rules.
I believe its the actual working relationships that are important and so often are ignored or given cursory attention.
All society rules assume an authority hierarchy even in an egalitarian collective. No wonder active members see them as alien to the coop culture they are trying to create.

I'm assuming you can't do that with a Company, which has to have Directors?

Sure! I'm at [email protected]

Note: This thread was forked as it had to diverged from conversation around co-ops and social enterprise to particularly focus on co-op governance.

No but you can make all members directors, see the model articles for a CLG workers co-op written by Seeds and RR here https://www.seedsforchange.org.uk/resources

RRFM14 could be adopted for a society that wasn't fully mutual, or a tl east the principles behind it could be. It is quite definitely a set of rules for a common ownership, not for profit, fully mutual housing co-op.

A pity we have forked this. All this is so relevant to the social enterprise and economic democracy alternative we were just delving into. That is not taking away from the richness of this discussion on rules and Andrew's brilliant replies. But there is a bigger issue here that is the real Elephant in the Room. The ruling ideas are the hegemonic grand narrative. Today this is sharp elbowed and winner takes all market fundamentalism. There is no counter movement because of lack of unity. A key word for us we need to reclaim is commons and common ownership. So what is a commons, very similar to the vernacular co-op commonwealth. According to Ostrom it is first a group of stakeholders, who agree to defend, secure and extend a common resource and who do so by democratically agreeing a common set of rules to kick out vandals, privateers and freeloaders. Co-op commonwealth movements like this erupted in the 1830s with the Chartists, in the 1880s across Europe in suffrage battles, in the 1920s with guild socialists and in the 1970s. We need to unite again. Why solidarity economy alliance matters.

It is my personal conviction Pat, that so much civil unrest down the years, & not least of all now, is because so few are aware of the commons as a viable alternative to state & markets, by design. The net result is they protest the latter, but that so often only ends up as a plea that it should treat them more fairly, & so we get an ebb & flow, but nothing really changes fundamentally.
I choose to believe that the commons is re-emerging at long last from within this conflict & try to play some small part in highlighting it. As such I very much consider myself part of a counter-movement. Having read your excellent book, The Resilience Imperative, I'm surprised that you would say it does not exist. Maybe that reflects a degree of disappointment, frustration & pessimism. I accept there may be a lack of unity but that's because it is grassroots, bottom-up, spontaneous & organic, I suspect very much like the Chartists etc.

These things very often explode into life. What's important is that as it emerges it must not be crushed once again by the allure of capital accumulation. Enough people rejecting that assumption as our reason for being will be the paradigm shift. That's an individualistic mindset that many may espouse but only play lip service to, until a pay rise is offered or a non-contributory pension, or they start a business, including a coop with end of year bonuses, or the latest iPhone catches their eye. Just ask the retired corporate banker baby boomers who were counter culture hippies in the 60's. Ultimately market fundamentalism is not imposed, it's by collective choice.

people dont read rules because they are scared of them. they would rather avoid the brain pain. i think those of us who are comfortable with such text forget rhis.
i remember working with cath m with a group of amateur artists setting up a marketing coop and gallery. we just could not get them to even read past the first page.
when i tried to talk them thru, paraphrasing into normal english, it lasted less than 20 minutes b4 they rebelled and stopped me. that is a normal reaction.
its one of the reasons why i like coop LLPs where the group can agree on and write their own member agreement. done that, it works much better.
even RR rules are too much, in some ways more legalistic.
like that equal care coop are trying a new way, like to know more. somehow members must agree and record how they intend to work together, and be able to reasonably easily modify it as they go on together.
the old society model and company articles are not fit for purpose. we're trying to force people into the rules when we should be fitting the rules to the people.