In today’s Guardian, Pauline Green, President of the ICA (the International body for Co-operatives), set out her view of what went wrong at the Co-operative Group, and of the kind of changes that will be needed to put it back on track:

The current problems at the Co-operative Group come down to a culture clash between the management and the members, who own it. Leading a co-operative business is a complex mix of professional skills, respect for the participatory model of ownership, and adherence to our globally recognised principles. It requires someone prepared to understand and work with the grain of a business that has a quite different raison d’etre from the predominant business model in the UK.

Crucially, she makes the important point that the Group’s difficulties should not obscure the success of the global movement as a whole. There is no shortage of examples of successful large-scale co-operatives in the UK and further afield. Far from being a representative of a broken model, the Co-operative Group’s failures show the need for us to incorporate ideas and learn from others.

Right through the financial collapse and recession, the co-operative movement has been growing across the world. Owned by nearly 1 billion of the world’s citizens, employing tens of millions around the world, with 25% of the global insurance market, providing electricity to over 42 million consumers in the United States, and with its largest 300 co-operative and mutual businesses having a combined turnover of $2.1 trillion, co-operatives already play an important role in the global economy. In many countries they are the backbone of the real economy – supporting local communities, urban and rural, through a huge worldwide network of small enterprises in local agriculture, community finance and just about every sector of the economy.

Given her seniority in the movement, we know that Pauline Green’s contribution will be of interest to many of our members.

Read the full article in the Guardian