International Journal Of Cooperation

Education Management and Development
Cooperatives and Credit Unions in the Economy and the Changing Business Paradigm

Abstract

Both textbook economics and management, spend enough time or space in the cooperative form of business. The dominant paradigm is investor-owned, for profit businesses compete for market share and profits. As a result of this, some graduate business programs are well prepared to manage in a cooperative environment.
However, the cooperative represents most of the UK, the U.S., Canada and other countries, is very competent management is important for the economy as a whole as well as for cooperative owners, employees, suppliers and customers.
Expectations among cooperative leaders is that the graduate business program (whether undergrads or MBA) has a very limited appreciation of how to manage the cooperative, while imbued with the spirit of co-operatives but without formal business training may have limited management skills. To fix this problem, a number of cooperative leaders have come together with the Saint Mary's University in Halifax, Canada to offer a web-based master's degree program in management of cooperatives and credit unions.
This program involves a 1201-semester courses and a thesis. It targets mid-career managers of cooperatives and credit unions.
This paper describes the program, how the paradigm shift in graduate business programs, and how creative it is being financed.

Introduction

Lynch et al. (1989) reported that the cooperative is emphasized in introductory economics textbooks used in the United States.
Parnell (1996) argues that since the cooperative form of business has been largely ignored in the primary, secondary, and post-secondary schools, the school has become a "choice much maligned and often overlooked."
 Bukit surveyed twenty-five introductory economics textbook used in Canada for their content on cooperatives. Four of the 25 are U.S. texts, ten Canadianized U.S. version of the text first, and the rest is Canadian. He's hoping to find a cooperative handled by alternative forms of business, or comparative economic systems, or under the money and banking, or in discussions that controls the company. (Hill, 2000, 282). What he found was that while almost all the texts mentioned credit unions, only one discussing why they are there. Non-financial cooperatives fared less well. About half of the texts do not mention it at all, and if there is it tends to be cursory mention. Greatest coverage in one text is one page. As Hill says, "Clearly, in most introductory textbooks, cooperative economic organization is either entirely neglected or receive only passing mention. (Hill, 2000.283).

A survey of the texts of the most popular business instruction used in Canada (see Table 1) showed the same pattern. Of the six texts surveyed, people should not mention co-operative or credit union, the two have about two pages of material, and some of the balance amount is lower. Of the two texts with the greatest coverage of the cooperative, one has two pages in chapter twenty-nine pages of "Forms of Business Ownership," used the other half of the space allocated to co-operatives illustrate the steps of the Canadian agricultural co-op to privatization and bankruptcy applauded Japanese cooperative members who had allegedly gouged. In summary, treatment of co-operatives in Canada introductory textbook business ranges from none to hostile. Only Furhman (2000) have something like medicine, non-objective cursory co-ops.
A recent survey of business introductory text is stored in the U.S. Library of Congress to strengthen these findings.

The dominant paradigm for both economy and business investors introduction to competitive business advantage to maximize shareholder wealth. It is unfortunate paradigm for a number of reasons:
· Cooperative has more than 700 million members in 100 countries (Williamson, 1994). So those are the economic forces that can not or, at least, should not be overlooked.
· In the UK, Coop Group has 70,000 employees and an annual turnover of more than £ 7 billion. It is important with any standards and, while the Coop Group is the largest cooperative in the UK, it is by no means the only one (Co-op Group).
· In Canada, 10,000 non-financial co-operatives employ more than 150,000 people and the largest of them had in 2001 revenues of CDN $ 3.3 billion (Agriculture Canada).
· In the U.S., the top 100 cooperatives had 1996 sales of more than U.S. $ 100 billion. More citizens are members of the cage other than shares stock market alone, while more than 2 million New York City residents living in housing cooperatives (Thompson, 1997). Based on the size and reach of economics alone, cooperatives are a significant feature of everyday life, is a significant employer, and must be understood by graduate students.
· As Hill (2000, 287) suggests, cooperative discussion can "increase the range of positive and normative interesting questions" that should be part of the recognition a business student to an understanding of economics. Among these are: the extent to which democracy should be part of our economic life and the life of our society, how economic units actually behave outside of economic theory, what impact does the economic incentives form of business, there are alternative economic systems that go beyond pure capitalism or planning centralized, in the real world, how it impacts the cooperative form of power in the market?
· John Stuart Mill raised many of these questions in the middle of the 19th century. So maybe it's time to make some effort to explain to the business students with arguments that surround them. As Mill put it: form associations, however, that if human beings continue to improve, must be expected to dominate in the end, is not that which can exist between a capitalist as chief, and the people working without a voice in the management, but the association of the workers themselves on terms of equality, collectively they have the capital to continue their operations, and working under managers elected and removable self. (Mill)
· Cooperative has abiding need for competent managers who embrace both the principles of cooperation and the latest in managerial best practice. The need was recognized almost 80 years ago:

. . . we have two theories about cooperative business administration, and they differ sharply. . . . "We are interested in starting a store ... and we intend to get the best technical experts that the business world has to offer ... [or] ... if we buy a superlatively efficient manager of Private Business ... We have a body and Cooperation and have lost the spirit. (---, 1924) and is echoed in a recent paper Australia: Council needs to be careful that he does not consider that its role is to manage the cooperative and that the role of the manager is to manage the business. It creates an unhealthy division that will not necessarily be seen in the short term but will have long-term consequences are not desirable. should be no separation between "cooperative" and "business." Instead, there is a need to recognize that cooperative managers need to integrate values cooperative in their management practices. Griffith (2003)

Presentation of current

There are currently three types of courses / programs available for post-secondary school students with an interest in the cooperative:
· Program in Functional techniques for cooperative employees and supervisors. Organizations such as the Co-operative College in the UK (which offers, for example, training programs for retail sales clerks cooperative) or the Credit Union Institute of Canada (CUIC) (a credit union employees trained in the technical aspects of their work) did a great service to the cooperative sector to facilitate increased employee.
· A single program that can be taken as part of an MBA program or a B.Comm / BBA. It gives students a sense of co-ops in much the same way that a single program in insurance or tourism can scratch the surface of specific areas.
· What is the best it can be called a "co-op appreciation" course is usually offered as an option in the BA program. This course is useful in spreading public appreciation of the role of cooperatives and their communities.

Unfortunately, none of these types of offerings address the needs of managerial cooperatives and credit unions as they struggle to survive and thrive in an increasingly competitive world and multinational. Parnell (2000) wrote eloquently this requirement: senior managers of large-scale co-operatives, recruited directly from business investors frequently, rarely have access to the appropriate development or training, and as a result they are often left to find their own how they should function in a cooperative organization. Many never learn what it means to properly manage the cooperative efforts, often with disastrous consequences.

Davis and Donaldson (1998) agree that:
"Cooperative management is quite different from the primary to ask their own principles, concepts and training materials." And as a capitalist retail sounding as Edward Filene said this about the cooperative store:
"A good cooperative manager should be familiar with the ideas and principles of cooperation as it is with the principles of store management business."
But no, to the best of my knowledge, every program in the English language that combines the principles and practices of cooperation and business in a way that will produce hard-hearted managers imbued with the spirit of co-op.
Why not? Although there are a large number of cooperatives scattered throughout the English-speaking world, they are not so concentrated geographically to be instantly recognizable as a clear educational market. In addition, research and teaching skills necessary for a decent program (especially at the graduate level) can not be found on a single university. They, like the co-ops, scattered throughout the world.
This leads to a new paradigm of supporters - a mix of tight cooperative values ​​and managerial techniques - to come together to promote a program that reflects the new paradigm. It was concluded that such a program can only be successful if it draws on both students and faculty from all over the English-speaking world. The advocates, through their co-operatives and credit unions came together to form the Cooperative Management Education Cooperative (CMEC), which more later.


Program

To meet the expressed needs of cooperatives and credit unions, a new program, which reflects the new paradigm, developed. It is organized by Saint Mary's University, Halifax, Canada, and has attracted students from Canada, the U.S., and the UK second intake will be in September 2004.
· Program: Master of Management - Cooperatives and Credit Unions
· Degree Granter: University of Saint Mary
· Target: Mid-career managers of cooperatives and credit unions. The first class includes candidates from the U.S., UK and Canada, from banks, credit unions, insurance, retail, and primary producers cooperative.
· Language Instruction: English
· Admission requirements: Bachelor's degree or significant managerial experience in cooperatives or credit may be weighted in equality, while work by cooperatives or credit unions, current employer willingness to provide sufficient time off to study, the willingness of employers to facilitate the use of current workplace as an object of research.
· Program: Eleven half-courses (11 x 3 semester hours) plus a study trip, plus a thesis full course (1 x 6 semester hours). All programs are purpose built for this program. The title alone is shown in Table 3.
· Delivery Mechanism: Distance Education, Web-based delivery using Web CT. Candidates take four half-courses per calendar year.
· Developers Program and Faculty: Taken from academic institutions in Australia, New Zealand, USA, UK, Ireland and Canada.
· Funding: The development program funded by cooperatives and credit unions through CMEC (see below). Program delivery is based on full cost recovery.


Financing development program

Like most universities that have been involved in the development of webbed can attest, web development program is an expensive proposition. It may be thought that the shipping cost can be reduced and then as an administrator just less skilled just took delivery of more skilled and more expensive
Academics (Is my bias towards universities that are trying to eliminate academic positions show?). But there is a cost a bit more up-front when the web of technical skills should be included and when, because of the program, academic work "out of the box."
Cost development of Saint Mary Master of Management - Cooperatives and Credit Program States will never be covered from internal sources even if the university is ready for future development costs in the hope of recovering later from what could be called subtle "teaching efficiency." Infect, Saint Mary's had and not intended to take the professor (and there's a strong faculty union to keep it that way), and delivery of the program is on the basis of full cost recovery there is no significant "profit" is expected.
Fortunately, individual cooperatives and credit unions were first approached Saint Mary's is to create a post-graduate degree program has been undertaken to finance the development of the program. They began by establishing a Cooperative Education Management Cooperative (CMEC), which has now grown to include co-operatives, credit unions and members of educational institutions from Australia, New Zealand. Ireland, U.K., U.S., and Canada. (See www.smu.ca / mmccu for a list of members). Major funding increase initiatives are underway, with more than half of the target now pledged.
It's obviously very satisfying to start the development program with a strong and tangible demonstration of the demand for the program. Fundraising also serves as a means to encourage participation in the program. On the one hand, the publicity surrounding the fundraising to make the program known. On the other hand, co-operatives and credit unions that have contributed to the development fund has a clear interest in sending their own staff to take the course.

Conclusion

This program is an interesting example of the university and community partnerships to achieve a variety of different purposes.
From the perspective of the cooperative sector, an international, developing a world-class program is available to assist co-operatives and credit unions to compete successfully in the global world. The program is encouraging, it symbolizes the cooperation among cooperatives across the industry and political boundaries.

For academics and universities in general the program is an opportunity to develop skills in working across boundaries and national institutions. The idea of ​​collecting lessons learned from various sources and then distribute to students spread not regular but may become so.
For Saint Mary's program helps us make the logical progression of skill sets an individual creates a web-based program to develop the entire program is based on distributed learning. This also opens up significant new international markets.

Bibliography
(1924) Co-operation (Monthly publication of the Cooperative
League of the USA) Vol. X January / February
(1945) Manager's Manual for Co-operative Stores
(Boston: Edward A. Filene Good Will Fund Inc.)
Berg, Ivar (ed.) (1968) The Business of America (Orlando:
Harcourt Brace)
Boone, Louise E., David L. Kutrz & Ronald A. Knowles
(1999) Business: First Canadian Edition - 1999 Update
(Toronto: Harcourt)

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