Summary
Highlights
Anu Puusa, a business professor, highlights her students' frustration with conventional business practices. She introduces cooperatives as a hidden solution to issues like environmental degradation and wealth inequality. Cooperatives are member-owned organizations where every member has one vote, a revolutionary concept. They exist in a sweet spot between for-profit and non-profit models, aiming for both economic and social goals across generations.
The cooperative movement began in 1844 with the Rochdale Equitable Pioneers’ Society in England. It quickly spread globally, influencing modern credit unions and farm credit systems. In Finland, Hannes Gebhard introduced cooperatives in the 19th century to combat debt, poverty, and unemployment, laying a foundation for the country's democratic values, quality education, and happy citizens. Finland is now one of the most cooperative countries globally.
Finland, with 5.5 million people, boasts over seven million cooperative memberships covering various sectors from groceries to banking. Puusa illustrates her personal experience, detailing how she receives bonuses and discounts from her consumer cooperative, with her family receiving over 2,000 euros back annually. She emphasizes that cooperative surpluses benefit members and communities, not just a few individuals. Her children are also members, learning about the benefits early on.
Beyond financial returns, cooperatives contribute to the greater good of their communities through employment, taxes, and support for youth, sports, arts, and cultural events. Puusa shares an example where her cooperative, PKO, built a sports hall for a local city. She also discusses the challenge of balancing profitability with members' diverse interests, which requires careful decision-making by the board. Cooperatives are likened to having two solid feet, offering stability and better outcomes when people are included.
The balanced nature of cooperatives allows them to pursue ambitious environmental goals. In Finland, the S Group aims for carbon negativity by 2025. REScoop.eu, a network of 1,900 energy cooperatives with over a million members, promotes community energy to decarbonize the economy and tackle climate change. This approach helps bridge the urban-rural divide and promote energy democracy, fostering cooperation over competition.
The global cooperative system, though diverse in products and services, shares a common goal: to create sustainable businesses that benefit people and communities for generations. Cooperatives are an "invisible giant" of the economy, resonating with people's motivations beyond purely economic ones. With over three million cooperatives, a billion members, and employing 280 million people, they generate more than two trillion dollars in goods and services annually, exceeding Canada's GDP. Puusa concludes that cooperatives offer an excellent model for doing good business and doing good at the same time, promoting participation and fairer outcomes. She suggests that Finland should brag more about its cooperatives, as the movement is not broken, just in need of better marketing.