Co-operative Business Consultants

CBC is seeking to expand our membership base to include more people who can add to, and benefit from, the CBC brand. Potential members are invited to send their CV plus a short e-mail of application, making reference to key parts of CBC's membership policy at www.cbc.coop/about-cbc. Jo, Bob and David are also available for informal discussions.

The growth of social enterprises has been celebrated  but how many of them are democratic or participative?

UK government policy is to focus on the output of social enterprise and ignore its structure. This is unlike the rest of Europe where co-ops are the core of social enterprise policy and democratic governance is usually a requirement.

Many UK social enterprises are therefore 'managerialist' in nature, relying on normal management authority as if they were ordinary businesses with normal employee / manager relationships.

the employee cooperatives council (a part of Coops UK) has recently finished the final draft of a code of governance for worker cooperatives. i have been chairing the working group meetings.

this sounds rather boring but is actually very exciting!! because it will be the very first 'owners manual' for worker cooperatives. it will list all the key processes needed to run a worker coop and , when it is online, lead on to sources of advice, case studies, examples and further explanation.

Please post your questions in this forum, and we'll be delighted to discuss them. Please refrain from strong language and show respect for other website visitors. Thanks.

CBC