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member, Human Development and Harmony Cluster, Pamayanang SanibLakas ng Pilipinas
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1. Total Human Development and Harmony Through Synergism 2. Holistic Health Care and Medicine 3. Deep Ecology and Harmony with Nature 4. Sense of History and Sense of Mission 5. Civics and Democratic Governance 6. Culture as Community Creativity 7. Light-Seeking and Light-Sharing Education 8. Gender Sensitivity, Equality & Harmony 9. Reconstructive/Restor-ative Justice 10. Associative Economics, Social Capital and Sustainable Development 11. Synergetic Leadership and Organizations 12. Appropriate/Adaptive Technology 13. Mutual Enrichment of Families and Friendships 14. Human Dignity and Human Harmony: Human Rights and Peace 15. Aesthetics Without Boundaries: 'Art from the Heart' . |
Mind Your Own Business Do Everything for Your Coop's Success. By Eduardo M. David Cooperative Leader (Pasay City) and Broadcaster (Radio Veritas); Leader, Advocates for Cooperative Education on Synergism (ACES); co-founder, Convergence of Primary Cooperatives and Cooperators; Board Member, SanibLakas Foundation. As of this writing, Ed is preparing to leave to take up residence in NewZealand. This article was first published in LightShare Digest. IF YOU OWNED a bakery in the town plaza, would you be buying bread from another bakery? Or would you be satisfied that your family is being fed your own bread while all your neighbors, relatives and friends are buying from the competing store? Would you allow the general manager a full leeway on his decisions, even if you observe certain lapses in his judgments, just because you had hired him to be fully in charge of the business you own? Would you even be observing his decision processes and their effects on your business? In short, if you had started your own business, would you mind it at all? Or would you even allow it to collapse for as long as you can identify whom to blame for such failure of enterprise? The Third Principle of Cooperativism shouts out loud to all cooperative members: “Mind your own business! The coop is your business, so please mind it fully!!!” Active stakeholdership in the enterprise you own is a matter of common sense. The reason why many owner-members of a cooperative don’t actively participate in the affairs of its business is that they don’t realize, they do not really feel, that they are indeed the owners. The cooperative sector, with its gravely destructive hierarchical internal culture, as abetted by the “itaas”-“ibaba” pronouncements and practices of the leaders, has not effectively corrected this sorry state of affairs. And we can’t even assume that all the leaders even want to do so against the interests of their own hierarchical and authoritative thinking, preferences and behavior, and the positions of power and privilege emanating from these. Active Participation, Not Mere ‘Support’ All cooperative members must contribute active economic participation in their cooperative, equally and democratically control the capital of the cooperative which is their common property, as the cooperative itself is their own collective business, “jointly owned and jointly run.” As a result, the members receive their respective dividends proportional to their respective capital shares subscribed and paid up as condition for membership. The members collectively allocate the surpluses for any or all of the following purposes: (1) development of their cooperative through the setting up of reserves, at least part of which would be indivisible; (2) patronage refund to each member in direct proportion to their transactions with the cooperative; and (3) support of other activities they themselves approve through the regular or special sessions of their General Assembly where at least a majority of them are present (to honor in practice the one member, one vote rule in all cooperatives). This Third Principle (which is the second of two in the cluster of “Internal Principles”) describes the internal business relationship of the cooperative members among themselves, ensuring fidelity to the definition “the cooperators consciously decide to meet their needs and aspirations through a jointly-owned enterprise.” This principle has two faces. On the one hand, the members contribute to the workings of the cooperative instead of depending on a small subset of people to do the work. On the other hand, as a direct result of that synergetic combination of the human capabilities of the members and of their funds, the members equitably share in the availment of benefits and services magnified by such synergetic combination, in magnitudes much bigger than if they had remained as separate single-proprie-torships, as separate personal enterprises. Ways of Economic Participation What do we mean when we plead with the cooperative’s owner-members to mind their own business? The specific ways can be derived from the long list of questions found at the beginning of this article. Some of these basic ways are 1) Build up one’s share capital by a combination of systematic saving and capital build-up (CBU); 2) Patronize the revenue-generating products, services and activities of the cooperative; 3) Promote the revenue-generating products, services and activities of the cooperative among friends, relatives, neighbors and everyone else within the owner-member’s sphere of influence; 4) In support of No. 3 above, inform and educate the owner-member’s friends, relatives, neighbors, etc., about the benefits of entrepreneurship, the advantages of the cooperative mode over other modes of business, the essence of cooperativism and the responsibilities and benefits of cooperativism to all owner-members and the entire community the coop is rooted in; and 5) Behave like a business-minded active stakeholder in cooperative decision-making, especially as it pertains to making business decisions (submit well-thought out observations about such decisions before and/or after these are made.) Coop Benefits Not Charity The benefits of coopera-tivism do not come from a separate entity called cooperative, it comes from the synergetic combination of the members’ own human and financial resources! Real cooperative leaders have the responsibility to ensure a sharp clarity among the members on this point, even if assertive coop member-owners are not as convenient to govern than sheepish and nominal members. Let the members’ own economic participation in their jointly-owned enterprise be the main basis of the latter’s growth as a business! And such growth should clearly redound to the economic upliftment principally of these same members, and secondarily, of the community where the coop is rooted. When members contribute resources and energies to their cooperative, they already belong to the cooperative as a new entity distinct from the reality of the individual members. The members continue to own the capital they have already contributed, but only own it collectively, as ultimate co-owners of the cooperative enterprise itself. They control only through collective democratic decision-making. They have to come together in a collegial decision-making mechanism like the cooperative’s General Assembly where the rule is “one-member, one vote” regardless of unequal amounts of capital contributions the members shall have given. (This is different from savings deposits which continue to belong to each member depositor who may withdraw it anytime.) The cooperative operates so that capital is the servant, not the master of the organization. The cooperative exists to meet the needs of the people and this principle describes how members should use their capital and allocate surpluses. Still, it should be clarified that the principal form of service the cooperative gives its owner-members is its being an effective mechanism for successful joint enterprise, giving these member-owners an effective synergizing mechanism so they can engage successfully in socially-beneficent business at a scale they would not otherwise attain if they engage in business separately. The cooperative premise here is that a coop brings together entrepreneurs (not kibitzers nor dependence-oriented “professional beneficiaries”) to form a unified enterprise aimed at producing the goods or services they themselves can use. A credit cooperative, for example, is not at all a borrowers’ club, but a joint undertaking of money-lending entrepreneurs who would be borrowing from the coop mainly to support this business and their other businesses. It is not a doleout-oriented charity institution underpinned by a very different set of good intentions and of approaches in serving people. Capital From Members Most cooperatives practice this Third Principle, where members are required to invest in a membership share or shares of capital in order to belong and to benefit from membership. Many cooperatives require their members to regularly contribute portions of their respective dividends by plowing these in capital build-up (CBU) schemes, possibly on some rotating basis or until retirement. In such cases, the cooperatives rarely pay interest, because investments put in by member-owners in the cooperative are supposed to fetch dividends. Interest payments are more appropriate on savings and other kinds of deposits, not on share capital infused by the business owners (the coop members). Let’s all take note of a very crucial point. The proper source of a cooperative’s capital is the membership itself, the owner-members. Let us not allow this ownership to be rendered artificial by sourcing even just a substantial portion, let alone a bulk, of the coop’s operating capital from outside the coop, no matter how presumably well-intentioned these may be. Not only does such external sourcing compromise the autonomy and independence of the cooperative in its decision-making to be done only by the members collectively, it dilutes the sense of stakeholdership of these same members if the coop’s money is not their own money anyway. If there are no prospective members with their own funds to start a coop, we have to postpone its formation; a coop does not have to start big. It is cheap thrill, even counter-productive, to start a coop with a large starting capital if such capital is not the members’ own. Moreover, it sweeps away the principle and value of self-reliance and collective self-help at the very outset. And dependence is habit-forming! As the coop prospers, it creates reserves derived from the retained earnings from cooperative activities and services. This represents the collective accomplishments of the members actively running their cooperative. The cooperative may make an appeal to members for further investment, and it is appropriate to pay interest on such additional investment, but at fair rates. The return on such investments should be at a competitive rate, not a speculative rate or in normal government or bank rate. The cooperative surpluses may be allocated by the general membership (through the General Assembly) in any or all of the following ways: They can choose to develop the cooperative in securing its long-term viability. They can pay returns on investment to members as dividends, thus rewarding members on their active participation in strengthening the cooperative business. They may support some activities and further developments of the larger cooperative movement, locally, nationally and internationally. Aside from achieving a just means of distributing surplus, the cooperative should not neglect any of these two important considerations; “Business Prudence and Equity.” If the former is neglected, it will likely run into serious economic and financial difficulties. If the latter is neglected, it will bring about resentment and disunity in the ranks of cooperative members for violating the promised benefit of the very essence of cooperativism. Throughout the process, however, the overriding consideration should be that whatever is to be done with a coope-rative’s net surplus or savings is determined by the democratic decision of the members, according to their free and fully informed collective judgment on which options are just and expedient and which ones are not. So, can the majority of the member-owners of your own cooperative fully mind their own business? For the sake of their having a positive experience in cooperativism and for upholding the essence of every true cooperative as “a social synergy of personal enterprises, jointly owned and jointly run,” we certainly hope so. |
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Critique of elitist, individualist and extreme-collective economic
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