Oct 2ndreflective thoughts
October 2, 2006
Today, we discussed about our impressions for People’s Coop., and watched the movie called “The Future of Food.” About People’s, many classmates were confused about what their directions are for the future because People’s did not seem to have a clear picture. With the cooperative ownership and consensus management, it is quite understandable that People’s has trouble finding its directions.
The obvious goal for most of the businesses is to make profits; however, People’s has very vague goal in serving community, and providing access to natural food. That is quite vague given the fact there are many other seemingly similar entities.
With cooperative ownership, there is nobody who has more stakes than others and there isn’t any single person who has the ultimate decision rights. So, establishing vision will be extremely difficult. For most of the businesses including non-profit, it is usually the managers’ jobs to establish and share visions throughout the organizations. Cooperatives don’t seem to do that. If every owner has the equal say about the directions, it will be a very absurd process to reflect all opinions. Consensus agreement requires more time and commitment of members. To have a true consensus agreement, everybody needs to have deep understandings about what opposing arguments are. In the corporate structure, it is relatively easier to do so by limiting the size of group and selection of committed members. I don’t really know how possible that would be for cooperatives in a consistent manner where the involvement seems more like voluntary.
In the cooperative structure, individuals’ creativity also may get thinned out with the respect to wholeness. That may create an emotional difficulty for some people. I would if it were the situation.
I got some questions to ask People’s. I may need to articulate a little more, but I will do that later on.
-How big is the board (the number of participating members)?
-How do you bring up issues to be discussed, and how do you decide whether it needs more exploration or to be dropped?
-How do you set a time frame for that issue?
-How do you compare and study each alternative?
-How much time commitment do the board members make?
-(Just because I’m a management major, I’m curious about this) Do you do any particular things to build cohesiveness among board members or staffs?
------------------------------------------------
I got some of the answers for above questions from reading the course packet.
Today, we discussed about our impressions for People’s Coop., and watched the movie called “The Future of Food.” About People’s, many classmates were confused about what their directions are for the future because People’s did not seem to have a clear picture. With the cooperative ownership and consensus management, it is quite understandable that People’s has trouble finding its directions.
The obvious goal for most of the businesses is to make profits; however, People’s has very vague goal in serving community, and providing access to natural food. That is quite vague given the fact there are many other seemingly similar entities.
With cooperative ownership, there is nobody who has more stakes than others and there isn’t any single person who has the ultimate decision rights. So, establishing vision will be extremely difficult. For most of the businesses including non-profit, it is usually the managers’ jobs to establish and share visions throughout the organizations. Cooperatives don’t seem to do that. If every owner has the equal say about the directions, it will be a very absurd process to reflect all opinions. Consensus agreement requires more time and commitment of members. To have a true consensus agreement, everybody needs to have deep understandings about what opposing arguments are. In the corporate structure, it is relatively easier to do so by limiting the size of group and selection of committed members. I don’t really know how possible that would be for cooperatives in a consistent manner where the involvement seems more like voluntary.
In the cooperative structure, individuals’ creativity also may get thinned out with the respect to wholeness. That may create an emotional difficulty for some people. I would if it were the situation.
I got some questions to ask People’s. I may need to articulate a little more, but I will do that later on.
-How big is the board (the number of participating members)?
-How do you bring up issues to be discussed, and how do you decide whether it needs more exploration or to be dropped?
-How do you set a time frame for that issue?
-How do you compare and study each alternative?
-How much time commitment do the board members make?
-(Just because I’m a management major, I’m curious about this) Do you do any particular things to build cohesiveness among board members or staffs?
------------------------------------------------
I got some of the answers for above questions from reading the course packet.
posted by Winnie at
11:34 AM
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