Keywords

1 Introduction

Can cooperatives grow to become large enterprises and compete with traditional enterprises both nationally and internationally? How do large cooperatives differ from other enterprises? What is the contribution, not only economic, of large cooperatives?

These are some of the questions addressed by the World Cooperative Monitor (WCM), a project promoted by the International Cooperative Alliance (ICA) with the scientific support of the European Research Institute on Cooperative and Social Enterprises (Euricse) to gather robust data on large cooperatives, mutuals, and non-cooperative organisations controlled by cooperatives all around the world—data that shows not only such enterprises’ economic importance but also the impact that cooperatives and mutuals around the world have on their members and communities.

Launched in 2012, the project has now reached its twelfth edition and focuses on the world’s largest cooperative and mutual organisations and non-cooperative organisations controlled by cooperatives by analysing each economic sector and collecting data from every country in the world (or at least those with sufficiently complete and accurate statistical sources). By doing so, and thanks to a network of contacts in different areas of the world, the project has managed to attract attention to a fundamental issue of the cooperative movement, which is the need for data to raise awareness of the economic size and sustainability of cooperatives and mutuals around the world and it gives them an opportunity to gain insights into how their sectors are performing on a global scale.

The World Cooperative Monitor annual report not only gives an updated picture of the size of the world’s largest cooperatives but has, over the years, also sought to delve into the importance of the role of cooperatives and mutuals in promoting social and economic development. This has been the case, for example, with the surveys that have sought to understand whether and how large cooperatives and mutual organisations are contributing to the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) set by the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development or what their contribution has been in crisis situations, such as during the Covid-19 pandemic.

This with the idea of providing data that can show that ‘as value-based and principle driven organizations, cooperative enterprises are by nature a sustainable and participatory form of business. They place emphasis on job security and improved working conditions, pay competitive wages, promote additional income through profit-sharing and distribution of dividends, and support community facilities and services such as health clinics and schools. Cooperatives foster democratic knowledge and practices and social inclusion. They have also shown resilience in the face of economic and financial crises. Hence, cooperatives are well-placed to contribute to sustainable development’s triple bottom line of economic, social and environmental objectives’ (International Labour Organisation (ILO), ICA, 2014) (see also Chap. 9).

That said, this chapter, after providing a brief overview of the methodology of the World Cooperative Monitor (Sect. 15.2), aims to offer a summary of the main results that have emerged from the project over the years by providing some insights into the dimensions achievable by cooperative enterprises and their financial solidity (Sect. 15.3), their role in addressing the challenges posed by the Covid-19 crisis (Sect. 15.4) and, more generally, their contribution to more sustainable development (Sect. 15.5) to show that doing business differently from the traditional model is possible.

2 The World Cooperative Monitor Project

The World Cooperative Monitor project intends to demonstrate the contribution of large cooperatives from both an economic and a social perspective, to respond to the knowledge needs of large cooperatives and, in doing this, to provide visibility to the cooperative movement by monitoring.

The project collects data from all around the world on large cooperative enterprises and aggregations of cooperatives as well as on mutual and non-cooperative enterprises in which cooperatives have a controlling interest.

The project primarily collects economic data, as well as data on employees and members, where possible. Data are collected through online research and by consulting financial statements and annual reports integrated with datasets developed at the national/regional level by the representative associations of cooperatives and mutual societies as well as other private databases that gather personal and economic data on cooperative organisations from across the world.

Every year, the project releases two different Top 300 and sectoral rankings, one based on turnover in US dollars and the other on the ratio of turnover over gross domestic product (GDP) per capita in US dollars. The latter measures the turnover of the Top 300 cooperative and mutual enterprises in terms of the purchasing power of an economy, relating the turnover of the enterprise to the wealth of the country. It enables comparisons of the relative sizes of enterprises in consideration of different levels of national economic wealth but does not compute the contribution of each enterprise to the national GDP. Rather, it measures the size of enterprises in their national context.

Rankings are included in reports made available annually on the project website (www.monitor.coop). Each year, the World Cooperative Monitor builds upon the research and data collection of previous years, continually refining and improving the methodology and data collection strategies. The reports have explored various themes over the past 12 years, from sector analysis to capital structure and the contribution of cooperatives to sustainable development. This work has resulted in the reports being highlighted multiple times at the UN General Assembly by Secretary General António Guterres as an important resource for demonstrating the impact cooperatives have on resolving global challenges.

3 Key Players in Their Sectors

The data from the Monitor clearly highlights that in areas where the cooperative model is most widespread, the size that enterprises can achieve is by no means inferior to that of traditional enterprises and that in several cases, cooperative enterprises are leaders in their sectors and compete with traditional shareholder companies.

To get an idea of this, one has to look only at the results published of the latest edition of the Monitor. According to data from the 2022 edition, the Top 300 cooperatives had a total turnover of 2170.99 billion US dollars for the year 2020, with most of the enterprises operating in the insurance (101 enterprises) and agricultural (100 enterprises) sectors, followed by wholesale and retail trade (59 enterprises). The Top 300 by turnover over GDP per capita, however, saw the agriculture sector stand out, with 101 organisations, while the insurance sector counted 85 enterprises and was followed by wholesale and retail trade (57 enterprises). The financial service sector became more visible in the turnover over GDP per capita ranking, with 41 enterprises, compared to 26 enterprises in the Top 300 by turnover.

The geographical distribution of the Top 300 by turnover and the Top 300 by turnover over GDP per capita has been similar over the years, with most of the large cooperatives and mutuals in the Top 300 rankings located in the most industrialised countries. The Top 300 by turnover over GDP per capita, on the other hand, covers a larger number of countries (see Tables 15.1 and 15.2).

Table 15.1 Top ten ranking of the top 300 cooperatives and mutuals in the world by turnover in billion USD (2020)
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Table 15.2 Top ten ranking of the top 300 cooperatives and mutuals in the world by turnover over GDP per capita, USD (2020)
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The economic and financial data collected over the years contradict the traditional theory that cooperatives tend to be undercapitalised and financially fragile (Euricse-ICA, 2017). The data from the Top 300 cooperatives listed in the World Cooperative Monitor shows that, regardless of the geographic area in which they operate (but with some differences related to the sector of activity), the large cooperatives are on average in good financial balance and generally able to procure the investment resources they need. More often than not, resources are generated internally, and in some sectors—as in the case of agricultural and consumer cooperatives—the difference with respect to firms that are not restricted in the distribution of profits is very significant, in the sense that cooperatives prove to be more financially sound and less dependent on the injection of outside capital. Hence, they are more able to withstand possible phases of credit rationing since their debt levels are lower than those of corporations.

Thus, the data shows that policies and strategies for the development of new capitalisation instruments do not appear to be more necessary than for other forms of enterprises. Indeed, data highlights that, for the large cooperatives, a possible and important policy to enforce would aim to stimulate, using new internally generated capital resources, investments in research and development as some of the data of the large cooperatives—type of banks, level of net property of total assets of the agriculture sector—could be interpreted as a low level of technological modernisation of the sector in general with respect to the potential use of capital resources.

With regard to the type, the majority of enterprises in the Top 300 by turnover in 2020 were producer cooperatives mainly representing agricultural cooperatives and retailers’ cooperatives (126, to which is added one producer/consumer), followed by mutuals (84) and consumer/user cooperatives (71). Eleven of the top 300 were non-cooperatives controlled by cooperatives, while only five were worker cooperatives and two were multi-stakeholder cooperatives. The results were similar in the Top 300 based on turnover over GDP per capita, though there were more consumer/user cooperatives than mutuals, which amounted to 84 and 67 organisations, respectively.

Although different types are included in the ranking, it is clear from the data that one characteristic unites many of the large cooperatives included in the ranking, which is longevity. Checking the largest cooperatives listed in the World Cooperative Monitor, it is not difficult to realise that in most cases, they have a long history behind them.

Indeed the history of these large cooperatives shows that they have been created to meet the needs of a defined group of people, often in a specific geographical area. If the cooperative is successful, the geographical area of members may grow over time. This implies also that the size of the cooperative grows, as well as, in some cases, the overall complexity of the model adopted. Data from the Top300 highlights that the ability of these large cooperatives is to configure the supply of goods and services from below and to adapt to changing demand. Therefore, even when several cooperatives join to create a larger one, the link with the communities of which they are an expression is not normally lost.

4 Resilience and Promoting New Practices During and After the Covid-19 Pandemic

During the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, cooperatives, which have shown resilience in recent economic crises (Michie et al., 2017; Birchall & Ketilson, 2009), experienced a year of uncertainty.

As highlighted in several reports (Cooperatives Europe Report, 2020; Dongre & Paranjothi, 2020; TANGO International, 2020), regardless of the size and legislative context, cooperatives across different regions of the world were impacted by the Covid-19 crisis. Nonetheless, cooperatives have been able to react in a short time by implementing a wide range of emergency measures to protect employment and their workers that have ranged from measuring temperatures to smart-working and childcare services or modifying paid time-off measures (ILO, 2020a, 2020b). The reaction of cooperatives to the first wave of the pandemic obviously varied from country to country, also in consideration of the diffusion of the virus. But the size of the cooperatives was also a factor, with small enterprises needing more immediate liquidity aid and medium/large ones requiring business planning and protection equipment (Cooperatives Europe, 2020).

Talking about large cooperatives, in 2020 and 2021 (Euricse-ICA, 2020, 2021), the World Cooperative Monitor team carried out a series of interviews with large cooperatives around the world to assess the impact of Covid-19, their reactions to the emergency and the actions they planned to implement in the recovery phase. The data collected found, unsurprisingly, that the extent of the actions promoted by cooperatives primarily depended on the severity of the impact of Covid-19 in the territory in which they operated. In the regions where the spread of the virus was greater, the interviews also clearly showed that cooperatives focused mainly on the management of day-to-day activities in an emergency situation with actions that have now become part of many people’s routine.

Indeed, the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020 deeply impacted the day-to-day operations of large cooperatives. The introduction of extensive smart-working practices and social distancing measures and the lack of tangible connections took a toll on the business models and operativity of many organisations. The imperative of protecting both the economic and the health status of stakeholders while continuing the provision of products and services was the most challenging priority for most of the cooperatives surveyed. However, the measures pursued, and the responses adopted proved once again the resilience of large cooperatives. The values and principles at the core of the cooperative identity contributed to the efficient and effective adaptation of these enterprises to unpredictable and often extreme conditions while still maintaining a clear focus on what mattered most, which was supporting economic recovery while rebuilding businesses and communities.

Looking at the main results of the analysis, the data highlighted that several actions had been promoted by the large cooperatives interviewed to support their members and communities during the pandemic.

In multiple countries, agricultural producers experienced declines in sales due to the temporary cessation of activities of restaurants, bars, and other clients. In Japan, for example, in the spring of 2020, schools were shut down and the demand for school meals suddenly disappeared. Since schools’ members are the main customers for milk, some milk producers suffering from stockpiled inventory posted messages on social media that they would start dumping milk unless they found alternative demand. Consumers responded to the posts and started encouraging milk drinking, and the consumption of milk increased. Zen-Noh supported the spread of the message by tweeting creative ways of consuming milk. One of the posts was retweeted more than 150,000 times and gathered 350,000 likes.

Insurance and credit cooperatives activated tools, in some cases promoted at the government level, to alleviate the debt position of families and businesses in the months of the pandemic and planned medium- to long-term actions to support the activities of their members during the recovery phase. For example, the Kilimanjaro Cooperative Bank Ltd. (Tanzania) granted funds to cooperatives for the purchase of crops and storage, since, due to a lack of exports, many crops had rotted and very few had actually been sold; the Co-operative Bank of Kenya Ltd. (Kenya) planned to grant, in the mid-term, moratoria on interest and principal repayments, restructure loan repayments, and offer short-term financing for operations; and the Odua Cooperative Conglomerate Ltd. (Nigeria) planned to inject funds at low interest rates to help its members continue growing.

On the other hand, for other enterprises that were interviewed, their plans for medium- to long-term activities mainly related to reorganising future activities to ensure the smooth running of their organisations, but the interviews also revealed interesting medium- to long-term actions that would impact not only the lives of the cooperatives but also elucidate the role that cooperatives may assume in the recovery phase by also launching new services and products to meet new needs. This was the case, for example, for large cooperatives operating in the health sector. Indeed, in an evolving society characterised by ever-expanding and diversifying needs, health and social systems will be increasingly called upon to recognise these needs and produce personalised responses, and the ability of cooperatives to involve a variety of actors in the design of social and general interest services will be crucial (Diesis, Euricse, 2021). This need is not new, but it has been made even more evident by the pandemic.

At the same time, the pandemic has prompted cooperatives to consider how to ensure the participation of their members in a period characterised by restrictions on mobility. As we have seen over the Covid-19 crisis, increasing digitisation has not only brought about changes in people’s work habits and purchasing behaviour, but has also changed the way people relate to each other and participate in social and community life.

On this front, interviews conducted with a sample of large cooperatives among those listed in Top300 ranking revealed that although digital tools have been useful in ensuring member participation during the Covid-19 emergency, cooperatives do not think that digitisation can radically reshape the way they relate to their members (Euricse-ICA, 2022). Digital tools facilitated the involvement of cooperative members during the Covid-19 but, after the crisis, they complement traditional methods to ensure the full participation of all members.

5 Large Cooperatives Looking for a New Way to Ensure Sustainability

The Covid-19 pandemic highlighted the interdependency of the climate and healthcare crises and, now more than ever, the achievement of the SDGs is fundamental, even if that objective is more challenging now than it was in the pre-pandemic era (United Nations, 2021a). The entire international community has been addressing an immediate green, fair, and sustainable revolution to recover from the ongoing emergency, returning attention to the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

Since 2015, when the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development that defined the 17 SDGs was launched during the United Nations General Assembly, there has been increased international cohesion towards a more sustainable, green, and fairer world. Cooperatives were highlighted in the 2030 Agenda as role models to manage global change and influence societies and traditional businesses to actively pursue common sustainability goals (ICA, 2013; United Nations, 2021b). Indeed, cooperatives have a fundamental role in pursuing the SDGs, acting on several fronts, including gender equity, combating economic inequalities, and implementing a more sustainable model of production and consumption (Moxom et al., 2019). Moreover, cooperatives have shown that they can be a lighthouse for local communities, and thanks to their solid social networks, they can sustain their members and the community, promoting a collective way of perceiving risks and supporting new strategies to face challenges or increase quality (ILO, 2016; United Nations Inter-Agency Task Force on Social and Solidarity Economy (UNFTSSE), 2019).

As highlighted by Hudon and Huybrechts (2017), there are several elements of cooperatives (and social economy organisations, more generally) that can foster a more sustainable development model. Their participatory and democratic structures, collective decision-making, often multi-objective and multi-stakeholder nature and focus on social aspects are foundational characteristics that could prove to be fundamental for triggering a shift in the prevailing production model (Euricse-ICA, 2018).

Over the years, the World Cooperative Monitor has sought to deepen its contribution to the achievement of the SDGs, particularly to SDG 8 (inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all; Euricse-ICA, 2019) and SDG13 (climate change; Euricse-ICA, 2020).

SDG 8 stands the need for a new development model that combines economic growth while ensuring inclusion and fairness in the distribution of economic resources and guaranteeing decent working conditions (Ferruzza et al., 2018). It is closely interconnected with several social and environmental needs that fall within the spheres of action of other SDGs. More equitable development can contribute to, among other things, the reduction of poverty (SDG1) and of inequalities (SDG 10), and it can affect climate action (SDG 13) and clean energy production (SDG 7). Looking at the implemented practices associated with SDG 8 therefore enables a broad analysis of the scope of the actions of cooperatives and the impact they may have on various fronts.

Furthermore, if one considers the targets that underlie SDG 8, it is clear that cooperatives can contribute in several ways to achieving this objective. They can do this by guaranteeing decent working conditions—that is ‘jobs of acceptable quality’ (ILO, 1999) that promote safe and secure working environments for all, such as by pursuing earnings equity, ensuring safe conditions in the workplace, and eliminating all forms of labour exploitation—and also by promoting the diversification and progress of technology and innovation while generating inclusive effects and sustainability (Ferruzza et al., 2018). This is particularly true for large enterprises that can not only promote actions within their organisations but also have an impact on the production chain and on the community.

All these aspects are of fundamental importance, considering the various trends that in recent years have threatened to reduce opportunities for decent work. Indeed, migration, technological changes, the rise of the so-called ‘gig economy’ and the legacy of economic, financial, and political crises continue to combine to ensure that work is becoming increasingly uncertain and precarious (Baglioni & Giugni, 2014). Cooperatives provide a stronghold for all activities that are more markedly social and empathic in nature; they can provide quality and stable jobs, facilitate the entry of women into the labour force, and help workers to transition from informal to formal employment. Cooperatives can also provide more structure and security in jobs in those sectors that are at risk of informal or non-standard forms of work. This is considered especially important for the future of work, since a larger share of employment is expected to come from the service sector, particularly personal care and social services, and work is now likely to be far less structured than in the past due to the rise of the gig economy (ILO, 2017; Roelants et al., 2019).

Based on the information presented in the annual and sustainability reports (Euricse-ICA, 2019), the analysis highlights several actions that cooperatives can take within their own organisations to ensure full, productive employment and decent work. These actions cover a wide range of labour-related topics covering both quantitative and qualitative aspects of the work, from work stability and salary levels to cooperatives’ commitment to develop work environments conducive to the growth and professional fulfilment of workers.

What is interesting is that the actions promoted by cooperatives have not been limited to creating decent work conditions within organisations. Attention has in fact been extended to the whole supply chain. Monitoring the supply chain from different points of view, such as the environment, human rights, labour rights, and animal welfare, is of particular concern, especially for agricultural and food-processing cooperatives and consumer and retailer cooperatives, especially if they use suppliers from different areas of the world.

However, creating decent work and sustainable growth does not mean exclusively ensuring decent working conditions within organisations or in the supply chain. It is also about creating favourable conditions for people to take advantage of their resources and ability to create their own economic opportunities.

Among the Top 300 cooperatives, several have launched concrete actions for the wider promotion of decent work and sustainable development, even reaching beyond the boundaries of their companies. The actions, which vary in characteristics, duration, and purpose, have mostly manifested in the support of entrepreneurial projects, both in local communities and in other countries, as well as in training and investing in young people.

Emerging from the analysis conducted on SDG13, large cooperatives’ focus on the SDGs is not only in applying virtuous models in their own organisations but also in promoting broader initiatives that are incentives for their supply chains and, more generally, communities to do more.

As recalled by the director of the ILO on the launch of the 2020 International Cooperative Day, ‘One of the things this pandemic has done is to remind us just how closely the world of work is connected to climate change and therefore of the central role it must play in combating it. It’s precisely because the cooperative model aligns short-term actions with long-term vision that it can give us precious insight into how to confront global crises, be it pandemic or climate change’ (ILO, 2020b).

Looking at actions aimed at raising awareness, several examples can be found among cooperative initiatives to encourage employees, shareholders, partners, suppliers, communities, and customers to engage in more environmentally aware behaviour. One example is the S Group, which aims to be the first carbon-negative Finnish company by 2025. To achieve this goal, the Finnish cooperative group aims to achieve both energy efficiency and greater use of wind and solar energy. Since it estimates that 90% of emissions are produced during product manufacturing and use phases, it has involved 107 partner companies in the Big Deal climate campaign to reduce climate emissions by 1 million tons by 2030—equal to (as estimated by the cooperative) ‘eight million trips by car from Helsinki to Rovaniemi, or the annual carbon footprint of 100,000 people in Finland’.

In India, IFFCO and the Buldana Urban Cooperative Credit Society have focused on engaging communities to plant trees and raise awareness of trees’ importance for the next generation. The two cooperatives joined the Go Green Campaign launched by the ICA Asia and Pacific Committee on Youth Cooperation to promote awareness of climate change, SDG 13, and the importance of planting trees.

Scrolling through the experiences collected by the World Cooperative Monitor, the examples can be multiplied to confirm that the contributions that large cooperatives can make in combating climate change do not end with concrete actions in their companies or production chains to reduce GHG emissions. Large cooperatives actively contribute by raising awareness of the risks associated with climate change, not only to the environment but also to public health and production and by supporting communities and people damaged by natural disasters caused by climate change.

6 Conclusions

This chapter has offered a brief overview of the results achieved over the years with the World Cooperative Monitor, which highlights both the size of large cooperatives and their contribution to achieving a productive model promoting more equitable and sustainable development.

Data collected over the years by the World Cooperative Monitor has shown that cooperatives are not always small and local enterprises. While it is true that their origins most often can be traced back to very localised histories and needs, territorial rootedness is not the only determinant of the cooperative model.

The second element is the cumulative time effect: cooperatives are, on average, longer-lived enterprises than corporations, and their growth dynamics are typically incremental (See Chap. 5). In this, they differ profoundly from capital enterprises, and especially in terms of the trends that have emerged in the last two or three decades, since the model of the large Fordist enterprise was replaced with the turbo-growth model of tent rather than pyramid enterprises, and so they are made not to last but to maximise their value in the short term.

The purpose, then, is never growth per se or even growth geared primarily to increasing the value of the company, since growth must serve the members’ needs and not those of investors. Its pace is therefore dictated by a need for stability and sustainability over time.

The results of the in-depth surveys of the cooperatives included in the Top 300 list enable a reflection beyond a pure analysis of the size of the companies to what role cooperatives can play in situations of economic uncertainty. By highlighting the support that large cooperatives have given not only to their workers and members but also, in a broader sense, to the communities in which they were embedded during the Covid-19 pandemic, we can see how cooperatives can act as bearers of innovative practices and services that look to the more equitable and sustainable development not only of their own enterprises but also of the enterprises in their supply chains and communities.

This is confirmed also by the data collected in regards of SDG8 and SDG13 that show the tangible impact that large cooperatives can have.

The examples collected through the Monitor project demonstrate the role cooperatives can play in pursuing the achievement of the SDGs and the leadership they can take on facing a range of challenges. The largest cooperatives in the world have shown not only their financial effort in pursuing the achievement of the SDGs, but also the awareness-raising actions made towards the national institutions and the community itself, demonstrating the strength raised from cooperation and unity.

This is the strength that emerges from all the analyses conducted so far; that is, the propagating force of these new practices and new ways of conducting business that transcend the boundaries of the enterprise in the strict sense to also influence the realities that surround them.